The evolution of religions

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Bierer, Everard, b. 1827.

The evolution of religions

Digitized by the Internet Archive

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IVIicrosoft Corporation

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The
Evolution of Religions

Everard Bierer

" Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good.'

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

Zbe IRnicherbocftcr Press

1906

Copyright, 1906

By

EVERARD BIERER

Ubc Iftnicfterbocftfcr press, ■new ffiorft

PREFACE

DURING a long life occupied mostly in the
practice of law, I have spent much of my
leisure time, and especially since largely quitting
practice in the last few years, in the study of the
systems of religion of the world and of religious
literature, both ancient and modem. The Bible
I have studied most thoroughly, and am well
versed in the Buddhist Scriptures, the Zend
Avesta of Zoroaster, the Analects of Confucius
and Mencius, and the Koran, and have read the
Book of Mormon, Brahmanic literature, and his-
tory generally, ancient and modem.

In this volume I have frankly embodied my
religious convictions, not for the purpose of mak-
ing converts to my views or to seek notoriety,
but simply to teach the truth according to these
convictions. I presume I shall offend many who
may read it, and be denounced bitterly by all
those whose religious opinions differ from mine
and are mainly the result of environment and
habits rather than convictions, but I have no
apologies to make. Truth will win its way
sooner or later. If my conclusions are erroneous,
they deserve obscurity; if correct, they must be
good and will stand the test of fuller and more

iv Preface

critical investigations. For defects of style and
dullness of expression, I ask the charity of those
who may peruse this book, and courteously ask
their pardon for having unduly indulged, if I
have done so, in any harsh or unkind criticism
in reference to any denominations, ministers, or
religious writers.

Hiawatha, Kansas. E. B.

September, 1906.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGB

I. A General Review of Religions i

Questions fundamental to Judaism and Christianity
— Outlines of ancient religions, Zoroastrianism,
Brahmanism, Judaism, Confucianism, Christianity,
Mohammedanism, and old mythologies — Refer-
ences to Herodotus, Zenophon, Manetho, Demos-
thenes, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Julius
Caesar, Seneca — Those great men did not worship
idols — Six great religions of the world — Other
religions merely abnormal — Melchizedek, priest
of the Most High, like unto the Son of God,
prophet of the first religion and teacher of Zoroaster
and Abraham — Ahura Mazda or Ormuzd, God
of the Zoroastrian religion — Angro-Mainyus,
evil God of the Persians, and Satan of the Jews
and Christians — Theory of evolution of reli-
gions— Apocryphal Books of Bible.

II. Comparisons of Modern Systems of Reli-

gions i6

ist. Buddhism — Its devotees in Asia one-third of
the human race — 2d. Christianity — Roman
Catholic — Protestant and Greek Church divi-
sions— 3d. Confucianism — 4th. Mohammedan-
ism— 5th. Judaism — 6th. Zoroastrianism — 7th.
Mormonism — Judaism — Christianity — Moham-
medanism and Mormonism — Cognate or related —
The ancient Mythological and Polytheistic sys-
tems of religion were the evolutions of gross and
debasing ideas, fantasies, and superstitions, now
extinct — Their Gods and Goddesses were gross,

vi Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

sensual, subject to human passions ; all more or
less limited in power — Legends of the Garden of
Eden, the Fall of Adam and Eve, the Serpent, and
similar legends in the religions of Egypt, Persia,
and India.

III. Ancient Christianity 44

Triumph of Christianity over Roman Idolatry
315 A.D. under Constantine the Great — All
churches then independent — No Pope — Arianism
or Unitarianism nearly universal — A triune Deity
unknown — The doctrines of the early Christians,
the same as taught by Arius, Pelagius, Celestius —
Trinitarianism established by Council of Nice
325 A.D. and of Carthage 411 a.d. — Admixture of
Pagan customs and interpolations and corrup-
tions in text of Scriptures, dates from those times —
Apocryphal Books of Old Testament and Apoc-
alyptic dreams of St. John admitted into Canon —
Amazing legends and miracles believed and taught
during Dark Ages — A general awakening and
restoration of Bible truths in the nineteenth century
by teachings of Max Miiller, Dr. Channing, Dr.
Priestley, Theodore Parker, Julius Wellhausen,
Strauss, Renan, Rev. I. H. Mills, Dr. Savage,
Dr. Chas. Briggs and others — Jesus divinely sent,
but not God — The nineteenth a grand century.

IV. Modern Religions 53

Population of the world in 1905 and number of be-
lievers in modern religions tabulated — Short
sketches of Brahmanism and Mohammedanism —
The Koran is an Arabian poem — Some extracts
from it — Mormonism and its founder — Confu-
cianism— Exposition of the Zend-Avesta, and
sketch of Zoroaster — His religion, once the great
religion of Asia, now only existing among the
Parsees of India — Tom Moore and the "Fire

Contents vii

CHAPTER PAGB

Worshippers," in Lalla Rookh. — The dual
deities of the Babylonian Magi — No such being
as Satan exists — Zoroaster and Buddha, both
princes of royal blood — Zoroaster's creed or seven
commandments — The Avesta or " Living Words "
— Moses and Zoroaster compared.

V. Buddhism — The Trinity, etc 75

Sakya-Manu Gautama or Buddha — Commandments
of Buddha — Buddha and Jesus compared —
The holy Books — ^Tri Pitakas, or "Three Bas-
kets," of Buddhism — Development of the world
in past 200 years, due to the grand Anglo-Saxon
and Germanic branch of the Aryan race —
European Christianity from 325 a.d. to 1700, com-
pared to Buddhist and Confucianist countries of
Asia — Wars and religious persecutions in Europe
during those 1400 years — The quintette of proph-
ets, Zoroaster, Moses, Confucius, Buddha, and
Jesus Christ; each inspired of God — The Trinity
not taught in the Bible, and that doctrine has kept
Jews and Christians from religious union — Count
Tolstoi's creed — Max Miiller and Dr. Briggs
teach that inspiration from God was given to the
founders of the other monotheistic religions of
the world as well as to Jewish prophets and
Apostles of Christ — All religions teach some
divine truths — Doctrines of future life and resur-
rection not taught in the Old Testament — Many
of the books of the Old Testament written by
anonymous or pseudonymous authors — Religions
of Old and New Testament not sr<i Generis — The
Hebrew sacrifices Pagan abominations and not
types of Jesus — The Trinity derived from Egyp-
tian and Hindoo mythologies and originated with
Athanasius and St. Augustine — The Trinity
repudiated by Mohammed — Rawlinson's "His-
torical Evidences of Christianity," unreliable—:

viii Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

The dogma of the Trinity, a paralysis in Christian
work — No mediator between God and man and
no atonement required.

VI. Consideration of Miracles 98

It does not follow that because the history and ethics
of the Bible are true, its miraculous narratives are
facts and not legends and myths — Miracles of all
other religions not believed by Jews and Chris-
tians— Argument about miracles — Many Bible
miracles considered — If miracles occurred in
ancient times, why not now? — If such miracles
were performed, God would have surrounded
them with such evidences that none could disbe-
lieve— The crossings of the Red Sea and River
Jordan, and miraculous feeding of the Israelites in
the Desert of Arabia, considered — In the reign of
Josiah, King of Judah, B.C. 634, the Books of the
Torah and Prophets had long been lost and for-
gotten, and but one copy was accidentally found in
all Israel — The Mormons believe in all the mira-
cles related in the Mormon Bible, without any
evidence for them — History of the Book of Mor-
mon.

VII. Internal Biblical Evidence of Miracles. 118

Discussion of the subject — The Hebrew Bible
mainly compiled by one person, probably Ezra,
after the Restoration — Bible Books written after
the Exile — Biblical Canon made by Pope Innocent
ist 405 A.D. — Apocryphal Books incorporated in
Canon by him — Jewish traditions of the Mishna
and Talmud — No inspired selection of Biblical
Canonical Books — What Julius Wellhausen says
about Biblical Books — Also what Rabbi Berkowitz
says — Consideration of the Bible story of Crea-
tion—Myth of the Garden of Eden, the Serpent
and the Fall — No such region of earth ever

Contents ix

CHAPTER PAGE

known to exist — If the story of the Fall is a fact,
God permitted Satan to come into the Garden of
Eden and knew what he would do — He pre-
vented Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the
Tree of Life — And so the tragedy and its con-
sequences were God's will, according to Ortho-
doxy— The atonement of Christ was provided, to
save myriads of those doomed in the Fall to eternal
death by God's permissive will, if Orthodoxy is
true — Consideration of the entire Orthodox
scheme — The scheme rejected as mythical and
contrary to God's attributes — God pardons sins
freely upon repentance — No atonement necessary
or taught in the Bible — Without Eden's myth,
the whole structure of Orthodoxy falls — Theologi-
cal works of Athanasius, St. Augustine, John
Calvin, and I'ev. Jonathan Edwards reviewed.

VIII. Internal Evidence of Miracles — con-
tinued 151

Some biblical miracles are grand and appropriate
as works of Deity — Some inappropriate and fabu-
lous— No outside historical or monumental corrob-
oration of miracles — The plagues of Egypt,
conquest of Canaan, barbarity of the Israelites —
Some iniquitous laws in the Mosaic Code — Jesus
said the Law of Divorce was Moses' law, not God's
— Law as to punishment of seducer of bond-
maiden, unjustly favoring seducer — The Hebrew
Sacrificial Code and rites could. not have been es-
tablished by God — Some thoughts on the miracles
of the sun and moon standing still — Story of Sam-
son— Samson was Hebrew-Hercules — Story of
Jonah and the whale.

IX. The Story of Jesus' Temptation, etc 169

The doctrine of the Trinity — God could not be
tempted by Satan, and as man such temptation ol

X Contents

CHAPTER PACK

Jesus availed nothing — Analysis of the story —
There was no power for example to others in Jesus'
temptation — The story is derogatory to characters
of God and Jesus — Some New Testament miracles
analyzed — Melchizedek and Zoroaster the same
person — Battle of Jeroboam, King of Israel, in B.C.
957, with army of Judah, in which 500,000 men
of Jeroboam's army are said to have been killed,
incredible — Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 — De-
struction of Assyrian army of Sennacherib.

X. Orthodoxy : The Trinity, etc 186

Consideration of the doctrines — Jesus' teachings do
not inculcate them — Up to Council of Nicea 325
A.D., Arianism was mainly the Christian Doctrine
— The Creed of Orthodoxy was finally formulated
by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, England,
about 1 100 A. D. — Rev. Jonathan Edwards' teach-
ings discussed — Our Canonical Gospels written
about the close of ist century a.d. — A number
of other Apocryphal Gospels then written, and
many miraculous stories of Jesus — The Monasti-
cism of the second, third, and fourth centuries —
Descent of Joseph from David shown by Evange-
lists Matthew and Luke, but no genealogy of Mary,
the mother of Jesus, is given, nor any evidence
that she was descended from King David — The
story of the taxing by Cyrenius and birth of Jesus
at Bethlehem — Jesus was born at Nazareth — The
dogmas of the Immaculate Conception of the Vir-
gin Mary and of the Infallibility of the Pope, pro-
mulgated at same time by Pope Pius IX, a.d.
1854.

XL Religious Miscellanies 218

Internal evidences of biblical inspirations — Com-
parisons of some contradictory passages — Some
commands ascribed to God contrary to His attri-

Contents xi

CHAPTER FAGB

butes — Some incidents in Evangelists' Life of
Jesus and some of His teachings commented upon
— First Christians were Communists — The Old
Testament taught not of resurrection and immor-
tality— Jesus Christ first brought life and immor-
tality to light.

XII. Second Adventists and Connection of
Secret Orders with the Supernatural in
Religions 232

People love mystery and the supernatural — Predic-
tions of the destruction of the world and final
judgment in a.d. iooo — Predicted Second
Advent of 1S43 — Millerism — Great consternation
in the United States — Swinefurth's Heaven at
Rockford, Illinois — During the Middle Ages one-
half of property in Europe belonged to Catholic
Church — Connection of Secret Societies with
Religions in Hindustan, China, Egypt, Greece,
Rome, and Europe — Eleusinian Mysteries and
Delphic Oracles — Jewish orders of Nazarites, Re-
chabites, Essenes, Sadducees and Pharisees —
Mohammedan Dervishes — Christian orders of
Masons, Knights Templars, Knights of Red Cross,
Hospitallers, etc. — Jaques De Molay, Grand-Mas-
ter of Templars, burned alive in France in 1314
A. D. — Present orders of Knighthood —Catholic
orders of Monks of St. Augustine, Franciscans,
Benedictines, Dominicans, and Jesuits — Scottish
Trinitarian and Consistorial Degrees — Sketch of
Masonic history — Blue Lodge, Royal Arch Chap-
ter— Their teachings, mystic rites, etc. — Masonry
an auxiliary of the Bible — Its organizers knew
no more of Jewish history, of Solomon, Hiram,
King of Tyre, Hiram Abiff, the Temple building,
than the Bible taught — Modern Masonic order of
the Mystic Shrine.

xii Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

XIII. Satan 247

Ancient names of Satan — Does such a being exist?
Legend of Eden and the Serpent — Jewish belief
in Satan derived from the Zoroastrian teachings
and Babylonia, Magi during the Exile — According
to the logic of the Orthodox Creed, God is respon-
sible for Satan's work — If Orthodox tenets are
true, Adam and Eve were not free agents, nor are
their posterity — Human beings are now as they
ever were — Sin and death inseparable from human
nature — Orthodoxy makes Satan omniscient and
omnipresent — With Satan and his angels ever
tempting them, human beings cannot but sin —

■ Existence of Satan and hell, contrary to God's at-
tributes— Orthodox ideas of hell — Sermons of
Rev. Jonathan Edwards on eternal punishment
versus Rev. M. J. Savage's teachings — The hell
of Orthodox Christianity no longer believed in,
even by the Orthodox — Supposed New Testa-
ment teachings of election, predestination, fore-
ordination, etc., discussed — New Testament
teachings have been perverted — Ultimate Uni-
versal salvation believed to be God's plan and in
accordance with His attributes.

XIV. Universal Salvation 287

Life but a probation and all will ultimately enjoy
God's boundless mercy, after just punishment for
sins — The question of the Hebrew sacrifices as
types of the Savior's atonement and of Jesus'
atonement, considered — Sacrifices were not types
of Jesus' death and were not approved of by Him
or by God — They were simply the adoption by the
Israelites, of the sacrificial customs of surrounding
nations — Jesus' death was not an atoning sacri-
fice devised by God, but a ruthless murder — All
Jesus' mission was outlined in His sermon on Mt.
Olivet — He never taught the Trinity — Many

Contents xiii

CHAPTER PAGE

changes and interpolations put in the Bible on
that subject — The doctrine of the Trinity first
formally adopted by Council of Nicea in 325 A. D.
— Extract from sermon of Rev. J. E. Roberts on
the Trinity.

XV. Summary of Biblical Criticism 296

The ethics of the Bible bear the seal of Divine in-
spiration— The prophets were inspired to teach
moral truths, but not history, geology, or astron-
omy— The ribald Commentaries of Voltaire, Rous-
seau, Paine, and Ingersoll have not materially
weakened its usefulness — Still there are errors in
the Bible, historical inaccuracies, interpolations,
legendary miracles, poetic fictions — The Jewish
Talmudists thought it right to change any text
in the Bible, in the interests of Judaism — Igna-
tius Loyola, founder of the Order of Jesuits, taught
that ancient traditions were sometimes superior to
Bible text — We do not need to be Non-resistants,
Communists, or Adventists to be Christians.

XVI. A General Summary of Bible Exegesis. . . . 303

The Creation of the world went on for many thou-
sands of years, through long Archaic, Paleozoic,
Mesozoic, and Cenozoic Ages — Various theories of
Creation — Man probably existed on earth thou-
sands of years before beginning of Bible Chron-
ology by Archbishop Usher — The six days of
Creation were indefinite ages — Authors of many
Bible Books unknown — Commentaries on the
Bible Deluge — Professor Agassiz' Glacial theory —
Convulsions of and changes in earth after Glacial
Deluge — Passage of the Israelites through the Red
Sea, the Arabian Desert, and the River Jordan —
Miracle of the sun and moon standing still a
poetic embellishment of Joshua — Also the story of
the manna and quails and of the river following

xiv Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

the Israelite migration around through the desert

— Balaam and the Ass, of the style of the " Arabian
Nights " — The Drama of Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego, and Nebuchadnezzar's furnace — Com-
ments on the Book of Esther, Queen of Ahasuerus,
King of Persia — A historic fiction — Lineage of
Jesus Christ — Espousals or betrothal of Joseph
and Mary before Jesus' birth equivalent to Jewish
marriage — Some NewTestament miracles — Com-
ments upon, viz. the Angel at the Pool of Bethesda

— Legion of devils going into swine — Resurrection
of many dead at the Crucifixion of Jesus as narrated
by one Evangelist, Matthew — Many gospels of
Jesus' life yet extant — The Resurrection of Jesus —
He was an embodied spirit — His forty days on
earth after Resurrection, and his Ascension dis-
cussed— His Resurrection was a demonstration
of immorta'ity.

XVII. The Divine Education of the Human Race 343

All nations are sharing in that education now — All
past and present religions a part of that training

— All that history records is a part of such train-
ing— Dr. Riggs' views on that subject.

XVIII. Miscellaneous Conclusions 348

This the age of greatest evolution in religious
beliefs — Religious unrest among Parsees, Jews,
Brahmans, Confucianists, Mohammedans, and
Mormons — The Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan,
and Mormon are cognate faiths — Congresses of
Religions of World's Fair, at Chicago in 1893 and
at Paris in 1900, helped to unify religions —
Teachers of all religions growing more liberal and
charitable — God governs in all things — Consider-
ation of future life — Human sins are only finite, and
finite sins can only merit finite punishments — Ex
necessitate rei future punishments must terminate

Contents xv

CHAPTER PAGE

sometime — This life and the future life are one,
only under changed environments — Punishments
are for reformation, not for vengeance, in God's
economy — Doctrines of soul-sleeping and Nir-
vana, controverted — We shall know in the future
life, all we knew here — Know and meet parents,
wife, children, relatives, and friends — We shall
know as we are known forever — One single soul lost
forever would be a failure in God's economy.

XIX. Conclusion 365

The Bible is the greatest and best Book of earth ;
we shall never have abetter ; none will ever super-
sede the old one — Scanning the achievements of
the present and future centuries, the conquests of
steam, commerce, ships, railroads, electricity in tele-
graphs, telephones, etc. — Scientific discoveries,
mechanical inventions, etc., uniting all peoples into
neighborhoods — Achievements of the Anglo-Saxon
and other European races — The English language
becoming cosmopolitan — The acquisition of the
Hawaiian Islands by the U. S., the war of 1898
between the U. S. and Spain, and the acquisition
of Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands — The
English and Transvaal war of 1899-1901 in South
Africa, the great war of 1903-5 between Russia
and Japan — All great events in the history of
the world and its civilization and universal spread
of Christianity are hastening the day when all
peoples shall worship in Christian temples and all
"know God even from the least unto the greatest"
— Closing with the great Russian poet Derzhavin's
"Ode to Deity."

Appendix 385

Evolution of Religions

Evolution of Religions

CHAPTER I

A GENERAL REVIEW OF RELIGIONS

THE questions fundamental to Judaism and
Christianity which are now engrossing the
attention of the Christian worid more than ever
before, are the following:

1. The plenary inspiration of the scriptures of
the Old and New Testaments.

2. The origin of evil in the story of the fall of
Adam and Eve.

3. The doctrine of everlasting future punish-
ment and, as corollary to that, the existence of an
evil deity called Satan.

4. The doctrine of the Trinity of God and, as
corollary to that, the tenet of the vicarious
sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the atonement by
Him.

5. The question of miracles or supernatural
occurrences.

The author of this book proposes to consider
these questions candidly as a believer in the

2 Evolution of Religions

inspiration of the moral teachings of the Bible,
and totally unbiased by any sectarian feeling or
influences — simply as a seeker after and a lover
of truth. He assumes in the outset, without any
discussion of them, the great truths of the exist-
ence and eternity of one God who is omnipotent,
omniscient, and omnipresent, all holy, loving,
wise, and good, the creator and governor of the
imiverse. He infers and believes from these
attributes of God and the nature, character, and
environments of man, the immortality of the soul.
Without a belief in God and human immortality,
which are assumed as axiomatic truths and have
always been held so by the large majority of the
human race in some form, those other fimdamen-
tal questions concerning the Bible and its teach-
ings become of no importance; but to believers
in God and immortality they are of importance
paramoimt to all other considerations which
affect the relations of men to God and to one
another. Intimately connected with those ques-
tions and their origin, growth, development, and
solution, is the evolutionary, intellectual, and
spiritual progress of the race. In the natural
world, the theory of evolution, or the gradual
organization, growth, and development of the
whole material universe : of its sims, systems, and
worlds, up through and from all gradations and
departments of unorganized and organized matter,
including all vegetable and animal life, is now the

General Review of Religions 3

commonly accepted belief of all scholars and
scientists. There was, of course, undoubtedly,
a beginning of creation somewhere and at some
period in the cycles of eternity, when the Almighty
started the protoplasmic forces and germ cells,
from the combinations and developments of
which all things in the universe have been evolved.
The processes of such creation, evolution, and
development are, so far, unknown to human ken
and may ever be so unknown, but the fact of
such creation, in the illimitable beginning, and
of the evolution of all things therefrom, has been
established, and is now nearly universally believed
by scientists. According to this theory, only the
original elements, molecules, or germs of matter
were created, and infinite wisdom and infinite
power brought into action the mysterious forces
which combined and organized these atoms ulti-
mately through millions of centuries and vast
geologic ages, evolving therefrom the imiverse as
it is. This process is apparently in every way
as grand and stupendous, and certainly more
rational than the olden theory that God created
all things as they are — simultaneously and prac-
tically instantaneously — by His mere fiat.

Not only has such been the gradual process
of creation and development in all the realms of
the material universe, but it has doubtless been
analogous in the domain of mind, in the intel-
lectual and spiritual training and progress of the

4 Evolution of Religions

human race. The intellectual evolution has been
slow and spasmodic; often retarded and almost
obscured by periods of reaction and retrogression,
as the material progress of the race also has
been. In the spiritual world, the vacillations
and changes have been greater. If man in the
beginning of his earthly career had any religious
knowledge specially communicated to him by
the Deity, it must have been almost forgotten in
the night of intellectual and moral darkness and
superstition which we know existed universally
in the earliest periods of historic time. If the
antediluvian history of Genesis is credible, out
of a vast population of the world before the
Deluge only one family of eight persons had any
knowledge of, or any faith in one God, or perhaps
in any gods, but the rest were utterly steeped in
ignorance, licentiousness, and crime. And by
the same record, outside of the Hebrew Patri-
archs and their households, we are taught this
same condition was true largely of the world for
centuries after the Deluge and indeed down to
the advent of Christianity, We know, however,
from other secular histories that there were
exceptions to this condition in Persia, Northern
India, and China. Two thousand or two thou-
sand five himdred years before Christ and six
hundred years or more before Moses, the pure
monotheistic faith of the great Iranian prophet,
Zoroaster, prevailed in Central Asia. Excepting

General Review of Religions 5

in the worship of the same God, his religion and
the Mosaic were very dissimilar, as hereinafter
noted. In Northern India and China, five him-
dred years before Christ, the splendid teachings of
the great sages Buddha and Confucius were
respectively the dominant religions and have been
ever since. As we review the entire history of
the human race, if we divest ourselves of narrow
bigotry, we can easily discover the gradual evo-
lution of religions and the progress of mankind
toward higher religious ideals and grander truths;
sometimes, indeed, absorbing and requiring the
sweep of centuries and the contest of intellectual
and moral forces operating in long abeyance and
often under almost total eclipse, to record any
substantial progress.

The proclamation of divine truth by the great
Galilean prophet introduced the most wonderful
era in moral and religious progress in the history
of the world ; and the evolution from the garnered
teachings of Judaism, and all the other old religions
then inaugurated, but afterwards greatly retarded
and almost extinguished by the superstition and
bigotry of the twelve centuries of the Dark Ages,
has in the past two centuries gathered such
momentum, that most probably during this new
century now in its dawn, the banners of the Cross
will wave triumphantly ov r all countries of the
earth, proclaiming the pure faith of Christianity,
divested of all superstitions and absurd dogmas,

6 Evolution of Religions

as the final evolution of true religion. Perfection,
surely, is to be the ultimate attainment of man
in the divine economy. The olden dream of the
golden age of earth has never yet been realized.
But evolution, development, progress, in the
intellectual and moral world as well as in the
physical, have always been imder the control of
infinite wisdom and power, and doubtless ever
will be, working towards a wondrous consumma-
tion of amazing glory and love, in which redeemed
men and a celestial earth, rejuvenated from the
old one, may in the future of the coming centu-
ries be the glorified participants and the blissful
home.

The almost universal, and, therefore, we may
assume, natural and intuitive belief in the exist-
ence of God and the immortality of the soul,
which we have adopted as axioms of religious
faith, has virtually been the world's faith since
the beginning of time. True, the people of most
nations have also believed in many additional
gods, but the plural deities were generally sup-
posed manifestations or incarnations in various
forms of the supreme God or of His attributes.
While the ignorant masses of most ancient peoples
undoubtedly believed in and worshiped those
plural gods or manifestations of the supreme
Deity, yet we know from the records of history
that the wise and learned in all nations, even some
such in grossly barbarous ones, believed in a

General Review of Religions 7

supreme, omnipotent God who was the creator
of all things and the ruler of all inferior deities,
and that they worshiped the inferior divinities
— if at all — in a merely perfunctory way.
Perhaps in benighted Africa, Australia, and some
islands of the oceans, the aborigines were all so
obtuse, ignorant, and degraded that none could
grasp the conception of the existence of one
supreme, overruling power. But those aborigines
were so bestial and imbecile as to be hardly human,
and hence could not comprehend objects of wor-
ship above their miserable fetiches. But to the
glory of the Aryan race, especially, it must be
said that the greatest of the wise and learned,
in all its nations, always believed in and revered
one supreme Creator, though perhaps ostensibly
participating in the mummeries of idolatries.
Even the aboriginal inhabitants of North and
South America believed in the existence of one
"Great Spirit," although some of them, as, for
example, the people of Mexico, Central America,
and the ancient kingdom of Peru, were nominally
idol worshipers. Hence we assert from the
teachings of history that the belief in one supreme
being has ever been the normal religion of the
human race, notwithstanding the fact that in
ancient times the uneducated masses of most
nations deified also the sim, moon, and stars and
the elements and forces of nature. These, as
already said, were usually worshiped only as

8 Evolution of Religions

incarnations or manifestations of the supreme
Deity in various forms, and not as in themselves
possessing divine power independently.

We cannot believe that the great philosophers
of ancient times, such as Herodotus, Xenophon,
Manetho, Berosus, Demosthenes, Socrates, Aris-
totle, Plato, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Seneca, Virgil,
Pliny, Antonius Pius, and thousands of other
eminent historic persons, worshiped statues of
silver, brass, or marble, as of themselves, gods
and goddesses. Such belief shows ignorance of
ancient history and literature. We know, on the
contrary, from writings of those great men which
still remain, that they and their intimate asso-
ciates did not actually worship such images, but
at most only reverenced the deities represented
by them. And many ancient peoples, such as
the vast following of the teachings of Zoroaster,
Buddha, and Confucius, did not worship any
idols, nor did the Israelites, excepting only during
periods of their apostasy from the Mosaic Torah
and the traditions of their fathers.

Religion is an innate sense of the human soul
and is coeval with man's existence. Man's
knowledge of God and his duty to Him and to
his fellow-men is derived from the light of nature,
from science, from innate consciousness and
from such revelations of the Deity as may have
been given to man in ages past by mental inspira-
tions or supernatural phenomena. The methods

General Review of Religions 9

of such revelations (if any have ever been made)
are known to God alone, and we can only judge of
the facts of such revelations by their nature and
importance, their agreement with the recognized
attributes of God, the character of the men to
whom they were given, and the circumstances,
supernatural or otherwise, attendant upon such
alleged commimications from God. We know
there have been many such purported revelations
which were spurious, even though alleged to have
been substantiated by miracles, and hence the
miraculous attestations to any religions, to be
worthy of belief, must, in the very nature of
things, have authentication much greater than
would be required to substantiate any merely
natural occurrences or ordinary historical facts.

The founders, or rather perhaps their early fol-
lowers, of all the religions which have ever existed,
excepting the Confucian of China, claimed that
their missions, as prophets of God, were attested
by miraculous manifestations. Now of many
systems of religions which flourished in ancient
times and have passed away, such as the mythol-
ogies of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, and
Scandinavia, and the still existing, but effete,
Brahmanism of India, we do not propose to
more than make mention. They, or their his-
tories, are not within the scope or purpose of this
work. All of those old mythological religions,
excepting Brahmanism, which yet has a feeble

lo Evolution of Religions

existence, have become utterly extinct, and only
their memories and traditions of wonderful gods,
and many of their miraculous stories, are yet
preserved in history. They were simply some of
the creations of man's craving for knowledge of
God and the mysteries of the future life, in the
early ages of the world, and have been submerged
by grander systems of religion and brighter light,
or swept off the theater of time in the cycles of
evolutionary progress, and supplanted by the
survival of the best and fittest faiths, each of
which will in turn doubtless disappear and be
merged in the one ultimate and universal religion,
better understood as the years roll by, and always
expanding in the light and powers of the divine
Galilean prophet, the central being of the world's
history.

Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, of Persia, who lived
about 2000 or 2500 e.g., Moses of Egypt, about
1500 B.C., Confucius of China, 600 B.C., Buddha
of India, 500 B.C., Jesus Christ, 4 b.c, ;^;^ a.d., and
Mohammed, 600 a.d., were each the founders of
the religions which bear their names, and which
were and are the best which have ever existed,
each differing in many respects, but all monothe-
isms, centering in one and the same God, and all
substantially, historically true, and ethically pure
and good. They each exist still through all
the mutations of time and empires, as great
religious systems and mighty moral forces. The

General Review of Religions n

other religions of the past, in addition to those
above named, had also many things in their
precepts that were good, but so much in their
worships was evil, barbarous, and frivolous, that
they merit no commendations. Probably they
answered some good purposes in God's great
economy. But the six great systems of religion,
above named, and which are as well of the present
as of the past, all taught great truths of God and
His attributes. The ethics inculcated in each
are mainly good and true. They are each great
factors in the world's life and development now,
as in the past. Their histories compose much of
ancient and modem history. We believe their
respective founders were divinely sent to teach
and guide the people in their day and generation,
and while some of them had higher measures of
inspiration, intellectual gifts, and moral virtues
above others, Jesus Christ preeminently so, yet
history and their work show that all of them were
great and good men, and in their times, and the
conditions surrounding and creating them, they
were benefactors of the race. Zoroaster, who was
probably contemporary with Abraham the
"Father of the Faithful," and consequently of
the mysterious Melchizedek, "Priest of the Most
High and King of Salem *" was the first prophet
of God of whom we know anything, and the

* Genesis xvi, i8; Hebrews vii, 1-3.

12 Evolution of Religions

religion which he founded and which still exists,
mainly in India, is the oldest of the world's
present faiths. It is now generally known as the
Parsee or Gueber religion. In the simplicity,
purity, and grandeur of his teachings, Zoroaster
is superior to Moses, and second only to Jesus
Christ. There were in his system of worship no
barbaric sacrifices, as fancied atonements for
sins, but he required adoration of one God only,
and taught immortality, resurrection of the
dead, and a future life of rewards and punish-
ments.

Following Zoroaster, after a lapse of five or six
hundred years, came Moses, also a monotheist,
but his religion was silent, so far as the books of
the Pentateuch teach, as to immortality and the
future of man. Some nine hundred years after
Moses, the advent of Confucius and Buddha
occurred. They lived nearly at the same time,
were both monotheists, and teachers of the
immortality of the soul, though Confucius' lessons
were mainly precepts for the present life. After
an interval of six hundred years came the Great
Founder of Christianity. Lastly, after an inter-
val of nearly six hundred years more, came the
Arabian prophet Mohammed, whose religion was
an amalgam of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and
Christianity, intermingled with the weird supersti-
tions of the deserts of his native land, and whose
heaven, for believers, was largely a voluptuous

General Review of Religions 13

paradise. The basis of all these religions is
belief in only one supreme being, excepting that
Zoroaster, or, if not Zoroaster himself, his priestly
successors, incorporated into his religion an evil
deity, whom they entitled Ahriman, Angro
Mainyus, or Satan, and who was, at least in this
world if not throughout the universe, in their
system, endowed with nearly equal powers to
Ahura Mazda, or Ormuzd, the supremely good
deity.

As the subject of this volume is, as outlined in
the commencement, to be mainly a consideration
of prominent doctrines and theories taught, or
supposed by many to be taught, in the Hebrew
and Christian Scriptures, we do not propose to go
into any lengthy commentary or discussion of
those scriptures generally, or of the history or
tenets of those other contemporaneous Bibles and
religions of the world, further than a general
comparison of the merits of the respective systems
and of their relative claims to inspiration. So
far as they teach the truth of Deity, and their
moral codes are in accord with a pure standard of
ethics and of each other, they have the same
claims to be considered inspired. Whatsoever,
if anything, in each of those sacred books is not
in harmony with said standard, nor with God's
attributes, did not come from God, but is human
and, therefore, imperfect. The inspired teach-
ings of Jesus Christ and His Apostles are the

14 Evolution of Religions

grandest and best of all religions. The ethics
of Zoroaster, Buddha, and Confucius are very-
similar to those of Moses and the prophets. There
are some things to criticise in all sacred books,
even in our own, and probably some changes
have been made in the original texts of all, in
translations and copyings. Our criticisms will
be confined mainly to our Scriptures.

In our theory of evolution and the ultimate
survival of the fittest and best, those other
religions, we believe, will all pass away, and all
that in them is good and indestructible will be
merged in the broader, more liberal, and ever-
lasting faith of Christianity, as it will be in time,
when expounded and taught as Jesus taught it,
and when the superstitions and interpolations
which crept into the gospels during the centuries
of ignorance and semi-pagan darkness, which
succeeded the death of the Apostles, will be
revealed merely as the parasitic growth of those
credulous and bigoted ages, and from which the
apostolic epistles even suffered. But during all
the centuries of ignorance, fanaticism, and bigotry,
which culminated in the Dark Ages, the golden
truth, though much obscured and perverted at
times, was preserved, and, we believe, the illumi-
nation of religious life and light during the coming
century will be very great. Many changes in
the Bible text were made in the late revised
version. Other revisions will doubtless be made

General Review of Religions 15

hereafter as greater light is thrown upon its
history, not, perhaps, ehminating much from it,
but in changing the text and relegating some of
the books of the present canon, such as Ecclesi-
astes, Solomon's Love Song, Esther, Job, Jonah,
Daniel, and Revelations of the Apocalypse, to
the present Apocryphal collection, and in noting
as popular myths and legends, or poetic extrava-
gances in statements of natural occurrences,
many of the miraculous stories in the Scriptures.

CHAPTER II

COMPARISONS OF RELIGIONS

OF the existing systems of religions the followers
of Buddha, the prophet of India, are said to
be most numerous, comprising nearly one-third
of the human race. Eastern and Southern Asia
is the home of this religion. Christianity in its
various divisions, as Roman Catholic, Greek, and
Protestant churches, has the next greatest number
of adherents. Confucianism and Mohammed-
anism each have about equal numbers. Judaism
has a few million followers; Zoroastrianism a
million or more, and Mormonism a million. Of
these "religions, the Hebrew, Christian, Moham-
medan, and Mormon are cognate or related,because
of having not only many similar points of belief,
but because all are more or less founded upon
and derived from the Mosaic system. Each of
the existing religions had its own founder. But
of all the other ancient systems of religion, now
all extinct, excepting Brahmanism of Southern
Hindustan, history gives us no information of any
special promulgators. Probably there were none,
and those old systems of worship, all polytheistic,
were the growths of time and national environ-

16

Comparisons of Religions 17

ments and conditions, the evolutions of many
religious ideas, fantasies, and superstitions.
According, merely, to the popular limited
knowledge and capacities of the people and
priestly classes, their conceptions of the gods and
demons they worshiped and feared were formed.
And these ancient religions were all based upon
fear, and not, as Christianity, on love. Even the
Mosaic, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Mohammedan
systems appealed largely to the fears of believers.
The gods and goddesses of those ancient, now
extinct religions, were mainly, as we know from
history and classical literature, gross, sensual,
subject to human passions, and not greatly
elevated in morals and intelligence above their
worshipers. Some were conceived of as about
humanly wise and good; some were guilty of
atrocious crimes ; and all possessed powers, accord-
ing to the ideas of their ignorant worshipers,
varying from merely superhuman to a limited,
not absolute omnipotence. They were not worthy
of the highest love and reverence of their wor-
shipers. A mysterious destiny or fate controlled
all. Some were more or less imder earthly in-
fluences and limitations. There appeared also,
in all those old mythologies, a class of lesser and
inferior divinities, men and women, who had
been greatly distinguished in their lifetimes as
founders of empires, as great warriors, sculptors,
poets, and painters, great patrons of education,

i8 Evolution of Religions

agriculture, and commerce, who were translated
from life to the realms of the higher deities, or
were deified after death.

Other religions, as the Hebrew and the Buddh-
ist, had their mythical counter parts in the trans-
lation from earth to heaven of great prophets,
like Enoch and Elijah, of the Bible. The higher
or lower conceptions of the gods, demons, and
other supernatural beings of the various ages and
countries, and the evolutions of religious senti-
ment and worship, indicated the moral and
intellectual status of the peoples, and their culture
and conditions of society accorded with those
ideals. Qualities of good and evil were apparent
in all human beings, and instead of apprehending
that such opposite qualities and corresponding
conduct resulted from the proper or improper use
of the faculties and desires, mental, moral, and
physical, with which men and women were
endowed naturally, as evil was universally preva-
lent, it was taught in nearly all religions, as their
basic principle, that the world was under the
control of great and antagonistic powers of evil
as well as good ; the evil spirits ever actively and
powerfully beguiling men into sin and resulting
misery, ever doing more active and efficient work
than the good spirits who sought to influence men
and women to be good.

In most ancient religions, it was assumed that
the progenitors of the human family were originally

Comparisons of Religions 19

created morally perfect and sinless. And it was
deemed necessary to account for a beginning
or primary origin of evil, disease, and death,
supematurally, as the work of an evil spirit,
instead of reasonably assuming the liability to
err, as the normal condition of the race ; and sin
and disease to occur naturally from the abuses
and excesses of passions and appetites, in them-
selves and their proper enjoyment normally good.
In accordance with such beliefs and, possibly,
largely that they might have greater spiritual
influence over the minds of men, myths were
fashioned by ancient prophets and priests, such
as the Garden of Eden, the Serpent, and the fall
of Adam and Eve in the Book o( Genesis, and
similar legends in the religions of Egypt, Persia,
India, and other nations in which an evil deity
was represented to have led the first parents of
our race astray into disobedience and rebellion
against God, and as a consequence of so doing,
through them, brought sin and misery and,
ultimately, death into the world. As sin was
hateful to God, it was deemed necessary in the
early religions of most peoples (not, however, in
the Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Confucian, or Moham-
medan faiths, which ignored such an idea) to
frame a system of sacrificial atonement for sin,
which atonement was outside of, external to, and
disconnected, except figuratively, from the repent-
ance, reparation, and moral responsibility of the

20 Evolution of Religions

sinner himself. This atonement was supposed
to be made by the sacrifice of animals, and some-
times of human beings, other than the sinner
himself, offered to deity; as well as by various
other offerings, which sacrifices and offerings were
believed in some way, never clearly explained
by priestcraft, to be highly agreeable and pro-
pitiatory to the heavenly powers, and that through
such offering and propitiation sins would be
pardoned.

In all religions a priesthood was established
and set apart to conduct and regulate worship
and instruct the people in its mysteries. The
priestly orders were supposed to be of superior
sanctity, were of the learned class, and anciently
the only learning of a country was in them, and
much of it was kept, as secret mysteries, from the
laity. The priests claimed to be ministers of
the gods ordained by them to expound and
proclaim their will, assuming usually to authenti-
cate their sacred missions by supernatural powers,
and authorized to inflict condign punishment
upon disbelievers.

Of all the ancient religions, those of Zoroaster,
Moses, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus Christ, and
Mohammed, are, as already said, the only ones
which survive the wonderful evolutions and stem
scrutinies of time. Brahmanism need not be
taken into consideration. It is crumbling into
ruins. Its days as a factor in the world's progress

Comparisons of Religions 21

are numbered. Mormonism is but a modem
parasitic outgrowth of polygamic Judaism and
orthodox Christianity. The books of its Bible,
crude, dull, fictious, all are in conception, style,
and tenets but weak imitations of scriptural
history and ethics. Much of good is in it, in its
way, — all religions have many good teachings
and morals, — but it is merely a clumsy religious
romance without beauty and without one particle
of historic truth. While it has a million or more
of votaries, it can never become a great religion.
The day for the wide prevalence of such delusions
has gone by. Knowing its utter negation of
any evidence upon which to build up such a
structure of faith, Mormonism requires, and,
amazing as it is, has found incredible super-
stition, enthusiasm, and belief in the supernatural
and credulity to propagate it. Its history illus-
trates the truth that in some, nay, very many
human beings, even in the educated and intelli-
gent, their religious beliefs or infatuations may
imder certain circumstances eclipse the wildest
vagaries of the imagination.

The foimders of the great existing religions
of the world were doubtless each ordained and
qualified by Providence for their respective
missions, greatly differing certainly in the measiire
of light and inspiration, but substantially agreeing
in their delineations of the attributes of deity
and in the moral precepts they taught. Their

22 Evolution of Religions

systems of faith and teachings were all so infinitely
superior, notwithstanding many differences
among them and naturally some defects, to all
the old mythological and idolatrous religions,
that these facts constitute the best evidence that
the teachers of each were in a greater or less
degree inspired and ordained for their missions
as co-laborers in God's training and education of
the race. However, to Jesus Christ attaches
unapproachable superiority. He was justly
called the "Son of God." He was the peerless
teacher of the truth. Next after Him in order
of superiority, though not in time, for he was
long before the Savior's time, is Zoroaster, the
great Persian prophet ; next Moses, the Egyptian
Hebrew; then in order, Buddha, Confucius, and
lastly Mohammed. Each should be judged as to
comparative greatness by his opportunities, work,
and character, by his influence in the world's
history and progress, and not merely by the
number of his followers, now, after the changes
and evolutions of so many centuries. The reli-
gions of Zoroaster, Buddha, and Confucius are
each sui generis, and grew up independently of
each other ; but the Hebrew Bible is the fountain-
head of Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism,
and Mormonism. Doubtless the sublime faith of
Abraham, who was a native of Chaldea, which
bordered on Persia, and certainly a contemporary
of Zoroaster, was acquired from the latter's teach-

Comparisons of Religions 23

ing, because it was very similar, especially as to
the great doctrine of the unity of God and His
infinite power and presence. Zoroaster's is cer-
tainly the oldest surviving religion of the world.
And his faith, though by that time much
corrupted, learned from the Persian priests and
Babylonian Magi, by the exiles of Judah and
Benjamin, during their long residence in these
countries, was undoubtedly incorporated largely
into the post -exilian Jewish religion ; especially
the belief in Satan, in a resurrection of the dead,
immortality, and a future life of rewards and
punishments — tenets which Moses and the
prophets had not previously known or taught, as
can easily be verified by searching the Scriptures.*
Very clearly, then, post-exilic assimilation of
the teachings of Moses and the prophets with the
doctrines of Zoroastrianism was the religion in
which Christ was trained while a youth. He
certainly had not all his life up to the age of
thirty years, w^hen his ministry commenced
actively, been working at the carpenter's bench
with his father, Joseph, without becoming ac-
quainted thoroughly with Hebrew literature, and
through the sects of the Nazarenes, the Pharisees,
and the ascetic Essenes, most probably with the
doctrines of the Persian Zend x\ vesta. The
gospel teachings clearly show that He had, and

1 See " Zoroaster and the Bible " by Rev. I. H. Mills in the
Nineteenth Century Magazine of 1894.

24 Evolution of Religions

that He was as familiar with the Zoroastrian
tenets of resurrection, immortality, and the
existence of Satan, as with the Mosaic Torah and
the prophets, which had only to do with earth
and time. There was a lapse of eighteen years
from the occasion when Jesus sat with the priests
and rabbins of the Jews in the Temple, asking
and answering their profound questions of laws
and religion at twelve years of age, until He
began His public ministry at the age of thirty,
during which time nothing is known of Him
excepting His interview with John and His baptism
by him in the Jordan. The story of the temp-
tation, subsequently, is evidently mythical. Dur-
ing all this interval of time, at least after He
attained manhood, Jesus may have traveled into
surrounding countries and learned something of
the religions of Zoroaster and Buddha. Oriental
traditions say that He wandered into Egypt,
Persia, and India during those silent years, and
studied the religions of those countries. His
was not a nature to be idle. Certainly, whether
at home or away during those years. He was
seeking knowledge and equipping himself for His
life's mission. His great store of religious truths,
chastQ and elegant language, splendid oratory,
and wonderful insight into human nature, justify
us in believing that He had seen much of the world,
had traveled in other countries than Palestine, and
was familiar with their religions. Thus He had

Comparisons of Religions 25

become splendidly equipped for His great minis-
try, and for laying the foundations of a religion
which, like the stone seen by the prophet Daniel,
cut out of the mountains without hands, was to
roll on over all the earth, and in the centuries
subdue and supersede all other faiths. All this
work was not done by Jesus, as popularly sup-
posed, in three years, for according to the com-
mon chronology He was baptized when thirty
years of age, 26 a.d., and was crucified in ^;^ a.d.,
or when about thirty-seven years of age, so His
public ministry extended over seven years.

Those six great prophets of Asia, Zoroaster,
Moses, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus Christ, and
Mohammed, were the only really great religious
teachers of the world, as original promulgators
of faiths. All doubtless in their several theaters
of action, were inspired by Deity to teach their
fellow-men higher and purer truths than were
generally known and prevalent in the countries
and days in which they lived and wrought. They
taught not for their own times alone, but for all
subsequent ages, for much of their teachings, the
grand creed of Zoroaster, the Decalogue of Moses,
the lessons of charity and brotherhood of Buddha,
the charming social culture and filial piety of
Confucius, and the incomparable parables and
sermons of Jesus Christ, scintillating with love
and light, these and many more of their great
lessons will survive for all time and lead all

26 Evolution of Religions

human progress. All of those prophets taught of
and worshiped one and the same God, a fact
which most Christians seem to forget. Their
ethical teachings are nearly the same, their great
tenets are much the same (of course differing in
non-essentials and ritual) , and if Christian ortho-
doxy be true, in the nature of deity, but only
differing with orthodoxy. Jesus Christ wrote not
a line of His teachings to leave with His followers,
nor do we know certainly that Zoroaster and
Buddha left any writings. Traditionally, some
fragments of beautiful poems are ascribed to
Zoroaster. Confucius and Mohammed wrote, or
dictated to be written, their own Bibles, the
Analects and the Koran. Moses is commonly
supposed to have written the Pentateuch. He
may have written the groundwork of the five
books from compilations of older writings and
traditions, but we know that they were revised
and many additions and changes made in them
by the post-exilian Jewish prophet, Ezra. In
fact, Ezra was doubtless the redactor and com-
piler of all the Old Testament books, existing in
his time, into their present forms. The sameness
of style and phraseology indicate a compilation
of all .the books at one time and by the same
person, and the evidences of compilations from
various documents are unquestionable. The best
Bible scholars admit it. The Talmud says all
the books of the Old Testament previously exist-

Comparisons of Religions 27

ing were lost or destroyed at the destruction
of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, and were repro-
duced by Ezra through divine inspiration.
Changes and perversions have been made in
time in most ancient religious writings. Oriental
scholars say the modem Zend Avesta does not
teach correctly in all things the ancient faith of
Zoroaster, for though believing in Angro Mainyus,
the evil on, He did not teach of him as a dual
deity, but that he was an inferior and subject
being to the good God. The belief in Satan as a
dual deity probably crept into Zoroaster's religion
in after-times, when it became amalgamated and
corrupted with the Magiism of Media and Babylon.
And to the glory of that most ancient, and
probably primeval faith, it must be said that
there were no absurd and debasing sacrifices
whatever, for atonement, in its rites, of sins or
for other purposes.^ But it may be said, Why
should certain men in different regions of the
world be inspired and commissioned to teach
different systems of religion? Why should not
one man be commissioned to teach the same
faith for all? Whatever the reasons, in the first
place, that has not been done. Moses' system
was in many respects a very different religion
from Jesus Christ's. Many prophets besides

• Rawlinson's "Ancient Religions," pp. 64, 65. "Zo-
roaster and the Bible" in the Nineteenth Century Magazine,
July, 1894.

28 Evolution of Religions

Moses assisted in evolving the Hebrew economy.
The Apostles of the Savior, notably Paul,
materially contributed to the development of
His religion. One teacher for all nations in the
past has not been God's way. In the second
place, had no mission, excepting to Moses and
Jesus Christ, been given to the other great teachers
mentioned, the world in all probability, outside
of the narrow boundaries of Palestine in which
alone the Mosaic religion shed its light for cen-
turies, and outside of the comparatively limited
areas of Christian civilization for other long
centuries, would have all else remained in the
darkness, sensualism, and degradation of the
ancient mythological idolatrous religions which
once existed, almost up to the present time. The
grand theism and splendid ethics of the other
three great rehgions of Asia, in Persia, India,
China, and Japan, would have been unknown
and their elevating influences unfelt, as they
otherwise were, through the long centuries of
their sway.

Zoroastrianism, we have reason to believe,
supplanted mythology and idolatry in Central
Asia, Confucianism the same in China. Buddh-
ism, in India, engaged in bitter contest with
idolatrous Brahmanism, and though it never fully
succeeded in supplanting it, yet it caused a
wonderful reformation in the lives and customs
of many millions of people, and has for centuries

Comparisons of Religions 29

been the religion of nearly one-third of the human
race. Must it not have been sent and blessed of
God? And when Mohammed proclaimed the
Koran to Arabia, the then mongrel Christianity of
that country and of Egypt and the regions in
Northern Africa bordering on the Mediterranean,
had become so corrupted and intermixed with
heathen rites as to be fast relapsing into idolatry,
which Mohammedanism utterly stamped out
and set up the standard of the only one God.
Christianity had made little progress in the Old
World since the Roman Empire embraced it as
the state religion, and with the exception of the
countries of the New World, colonized from
Europe, until really the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, had made small advance for
fifteen hundred years. So that in the providence
of God, those other ancient religions, when they
came among men, were absolutely necessary for
the welfare of the world. All but Mohammed-
anism, long antedated Christianity.

Very little progress in the means of communi-
cation among men by travel and commerce had
been made for many centuries until the advent of
steam and electricity. Since then, and mainly
during the past one himdred years, more has been
done to spread Christianity over the world and
for the general education of the people, than
during the nearly seventeen centuries previous,
since the days of Jesus Christ and His Apostles.

30 Evolution of Religions

Hence, we repeat that in the providence of God
and in the wonderful evolutions of His moral
government, the religions of Zoroaster, Confucius,
Buddha, and Mohammed were apparently great
essential factors in the progress, the conservatism,
and intellectual and moral development of the
human race. They grew up where Christianity
and Judaism, excepting in the case of Moham-
medanism, were imknown. They filled voids of
darkness and the degradations of utterly false
religions which would otherwise have existed,
where they supplanted them, so far as we can
see, up to within half a century past. So these
religions have really immensely blessed the
countries in which they were dominant for thou-
sands of years. Hence, in view of these facts, why
should Christians denoimce those other great
religions as false systems, each claiming inspira-
tion from God to their founders, and each pro-
claiming the same grand fimdamental religious
truths ? Hardly one in a thousand of Christians
even at this day knows anything about them
Until recent years they filled no place which
Christianity would have occupied, and without
their various sacred books teaching of one God
only, and pure morals, the peopb of all those
coimtries who worshiped under those religious
would otherwise, literally, in the language of the
old prophet of Israel, "have sat in darkness and
the shadow of death," in utter mental and moral

Comparisons of Religions 31

darkness. Yes, we believe their founders were
sent of God and gave to their followers the best
religions suited to their capacities and the times.
And though not gifted with the power and inspi-
ration of Jesus, the Son of God, they were, we
verily beheve, co-laborers in the moral vineyard
of earth, each teaching of the one God and pure
morals, inspired in so far as they revealed God's
will, but in their miracles, histories, forms of
worship and civil laws, they were only human
and wrote as men.

There are errors in all those sacred books, and
some things perhaps that were best not in them,
many things in some of them, men wrote, men
compiled, and men translated them into other
languages than the originals — erring, fallible men.
It is not believed at this day by the best scholars
that Moses wrote the Pentateuch as it is, or that
Joshua wrote the book which goes by his name,
or that the historical and most other books of
the Old Testament were written by the persons to
whom their authorships have usually been as-
cribed. And the authorships of the Gospels and
Epistles of the New Testament are, for the most
part, uncertain. Rev. Charles Briggs, probably
the ablest Bible scholar and linguist of our day,
and many other profound biblical teachers, con-
clusively prove that the authorship of nearly all
the books of the Old Testament, and of several
of the Gospels and some of the Epistles of the

32 Evolution of Religions

New, are either anonymous or pseudonymous,
imknown or fictitious. ^ No more do we know at
this day who were the authors or compilers of
the Zend Avesta, the Tri Pitakas, or "Three
Baskets" of the Buddhists, or the Brahman
Vedas. Much of these ancient Bibles are
resplendent with great truths, and all, excepting
the Vedas, teach only of the One Almighty Being ;
but, nevertheless, all have many things in them
that are of the "earth earthy," even if much in
them is from God. So that truly, as we believe
and as we expect to show clearly in these pages,
even of our Hebrew and Christian Scriptures,
only their revelations of God and of His laws bear
the impress of inspiration. While we shall refer
frequently in these pages to the sacred books of
the other great religions of the world, and may
discuss and compare their ethics and forms of
worship with the Jewish and Christian religions,
the questions of discussion will be mainly of those
latter systems as composing one Bible and of the
great doctrinal tenets supposed to be taught
therein, as hereinbefore outlined. We may say
here, that though based upon the teachings of
Moses and the prophets, Jesus' religion was not
the same as theirs. The Jews were mainly hostile
to it in Christ's time, and have been so ever since.
Their rabbinical books, the Talmuds, Mishnas,

• Note B, Appendix.

Comparisons of Religions 33

and others, bitterly denoiince it. Many of the
laws and institutions of the Mosaic economy,
such as the sacrificial customs, polygamy, slavery,
divorces at will of husbands, etc., were wrong
and barbarous. We cannot believe they were
ever ordained of God, although so declared in the
Pentateuch, because they were institutions con-
trary to His attributes, and we know from history
and experience, contrary to human welfare.*
They were all contrary to Jesus' life and doctrines.
He specially repudiated polygamy and divorces,
and never indorsed those other institutions,
never observed the sacrificial rites, and frequently
denounced the Jewish priesthood of the Mosaic
worship in the most bitter terms.

No more terrible excoriation of the ecclesi-
astical hierarchy of any rehgion can be found
than in Jesus' denunciation of the priests, scribes,
and Pharisees in the twenty-third chapter of St.
Matthew. These denunciations are the more
remarkable, for they were of orthodox believers
in the Mosaic economy; but of the atheistic and
heretical Sadducees he had Httle to say, and seldom
censured them. His portrayals of the character
of His Father, God, were absolutely antagonistic
to many of the ascriptions to Jehovah, of hatred
and revenge, found in the Old Testament. Surely
the God of Israel, of whom Moses and Joshua

» Briggs, "Bible, Church, and Reason." Appendix, p.
259-

34 Evolution of Religions

taught as having ordered the slaughter of all the
men, ivomen, and children of the Amalekites and
of certain of the cities of the Canaanites, without
even the shadow of mercy, was not the God whom
Jesus worshiped as His "Father in Heaven."
So even Jesus did not recognize the teachings and
laws of the Mosaic religion in many essentials
as His own belief, but on the contrary taught
otherwise.

We do not propose writing a commentary upon
the Bible or specially upon any of its books, but
only an examination of the most salient questions
connected with it and outlined in the beginning
of this work. In reviewing those questions and
connected therewith, discussing on general lines
some of its historical narratives, its legends and
miracles, its ethical code, ceremonial and sacrifi-
cial institutions, and the Mosaic polity generally,
we believe they should be considered in the light
of the great fundamental truths, assiimed as
axiomatics in the outset of this work as the
imiversal belief of all intelligent and reasonable
people of all faiths at this day. That the one and
only God, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-
present, whose government is universal and whose
laws are changeless, is the creator of all things
and father of all rational beings, and desires the
temporal and eternal welfare of each and all
His children, and has endowed them with immor-
tal spirit life that they may fulfill the purposes

Comparisons of Religions 35

of their being, is also universally believed. That
such are His purposes, and that they will ulti-
mately be carried out and accompHshed in har-
mony with His universal plans, in universal
salvation, all, we are sorry to say, do not also
believe, but I and many others do imques-
tioningly believe and trust. And further believ-
ing and holding that enlightened human reason
and conscience are also in harmony with God's
laws in reference to all moral obligations, in so
far as they are revealed in nature and the Bible,
we shall also assume that whatever in our Bible
or in the sacred books of any other religion does
not square with such standard of ethics or is
repugnant thereto, clearly and unquestionably,
even to the reason and consciences of honest and
ordinarily intelligent persons free from sectarian
or other bias, though not specialists in religious
literature, is not of or from God, nor in accordance
with His will, although it may be said to be so in
any books, and may be declared by the writers of
such books to have been enunciated by God. In
such cases we believe, if there are any such incon-
gruities in the Bible, either that the original text
has been changed or that the good men of old
who wrote or compiled the various books thereof,
sometimes put therein matters which were merely
the products of their own minds, though assumed
by them to have come from God. These matters,
in our belief, were sometimes fictions and allego-

36 Evolution of Religions

ries, usually poetic, and framed to enforce par-
ticular precepts and theories supposed to have
been inspired. In other cases we believe such
matters to have been merely legends, which were
easily accepted for truths, in ages of ignorance
and superstition, even by comparatively wise and
learned men. That is, broadly and clearly to
state our position more concisely : No matter how
venerable with antiquity, no matter with what
historical or ecclesiastical authority championed or
enforced, whatever is not in accordance with the
holy character of God and with the pure ethics and
enlightened reason and consciences He has given
us, or in the matter of historical or miraculous
occurrences whatever has not reasonable evidences
of authenticity, we shall reject and discard as not
inspired or not literally true, or at least, as verdicts
of Scotch juries sometimes say, as "not proven."
So by such standards of conscience, evidence, and
criticism, we propose to examine and judge histori-
cal statements, miracles, laws^ religious rites, sac-
rificial institutions, and ordinances of the Bible, in
so far as we consider them, and also creeds of faith
supposed to be deduced therefrom, especially
those taught by orthodox Christian denominations,
only asking candid hearing and honest, dispas-
sionate judgment by those who may read this
book. Its general purposes have been already
stated. And we also desire thereby, and by a
general review of the Bible and special considera-

Comparisons of Religions 37

tion of some of its most important historical
statements, ordinances, and ethics, that we may
contribute something to the advancement of true
religion, as we believe and understand it.

Ever since the dawn of time, or at least from
the period "whereof the memory- of man and the
records of history run not to the contrary," the
annals of the human race have been largely
filled up with narratives of the many religions of
the world, and of the wars and devastations
resulting from the hatreds and antagonisms of
the adherents of the different faiths. Each
always claimed a divine origin, and the prophets
and priests of each system furnished, as they
claimed, ample proofs to the people of its divinity,
and whenever their power was sufficiently great,
demanded, under dire penalties, absolute sub-
mission to the decrees of heaven as promulgated
by them. Whether there was ever an original
primary revelation from God to man in the very
beginning of time, we do not know. Even
Genesis does not teach any. Some great scholars
believe there was such ancient revelation ; but if
so, it was probably only traditional and soon lost
or corrupted. Judging from the changes which
scholars of oriental languages say have crept
into the religions of Zoroaster and Moses, and
even into the teachings of Christ and His Apostles,
it seems imavoidable that religions should be
corrupted in the evolutions of time, especially in

sS Evolution of Religions

ages of great ignorance and superstition, when
there were no printed books and few manu-
scripts, or through incompetency of translations,
or work done in order to conform to the varying
creeds of enthusiasts and bigots, or partially to
amalgamate the power and policy of the period
with existing religions. Zoroastrianism, the oldest
religion of the world, certainly older than the
religions of Egypt and India of three thousand
years ago, was undoubtedly in its original form
superior to the religion of Moses, or any other of
the ancient religions, in that it taught of only
one God and resurrection, immortality and
eternal life, without the barbarism of animal or
human sacrifices, or the delusion of an atoning
mediator between the Merciful Father and His
earthly children. It is really the primary religion
so far as known.

The religion of the Hebrews hardly gave a
hint of immortality. Its bloody and impure
sacrificial rites had no higher authority than the
similar worships of the heathen nations around
them. The fact that the one religion was mono-
theistic and the others polytheistic never sancti-
fied such degrading worship. Sacrificial offerings
to God were simply the product of ignorant,
benighted superstitions, and could not have had
the sanction of the Almighty. It is doubtful
if the Israelites did not believe that other nations
had living gods of their own, and only believed

Comparisons of Religions 39

that Israel's God was the greatest. It may be
somewhat shocking to the religious ideas and
sensibilities of most Jews and Christians to
associate the Mosaic worship in any sense with
that of the ancient surroimding nations, but the
sacrificial services were much alike and grew out
of similar degrading conceptions of God, namely,
that the savor of sacrifices was pleasant to Him,
and would induce Him to grant expiation for
sins. We know it is said that the sacrifices of
the Hebrews were anti-types of Jesus, and were
partly so instituted by God, but the Torah or the
prophets give no authority for such teaching.
Such doctrines were originated long after the
crucifixion. They were not taught by Jesus.
The sacrificial rites were denounced by nearly all
the prophets.^ Such ideas as the Almighty being
gratified and appeased by the "sweet savor"
arising from the smell of the burning victims on
the altars certainly originated in the same igno-
rant and unhallowed conceptions of God as
indeed the sacrificial worship of all other nations.
To us it seems sacrilegious to suppose that God
ever authorized it. The best proof that such
worship was unhallowed and debasing is that the
Israelites were much of the time, nay most of the
time, even in the land of promise to which God
had led them, and notwithstanding their Mosaic
Torah and the teachings and warnings of many

' Isaiah i. and Micah vi.

40 Evolution of Religions

prophets, gross idolaters, even frequently sacri-
ficing human victims to Moloch, Baal, Rimmon,
Ashtarte, and other gods. They were in no
sense better than, at some periods if as good as,
some of the surroimding nations.

For their general wickedness, vile sacrifices, and
besotted idolatries, ten of the twelve tribes of
Israel were finally conquered and exiled en masse
from the Promised Land by Assyrian invaders,
and became in time so thoroughly amalgamated
and incorporated with their conquerors, or scat-
tered over the world, that they not only lost their
old religion and became aliens to all the ancient
promises and types, but the strains of blood and
ties of kindred with their Judean and Benjamitic
brethren were also entirely lost and have never
been gathered together again. Thus notwith-
standing the wonderful events of their history,
and the amazing miracles which, if true, they and
their fathers had witnessed for centuries, and the
common laws and religion which, it would seem,
ought to have bound them together forever as
one people, a great majority of the " Holy People"
were disrupted from the rest and passed in a few
years into oblivion. While about one hundred
and thirty-three years afterwards their brethren
of Judah and Benjamin, as wicked and almost as
idolatrous, having at one time, for a generation or
two, entirely lost their old faith, ^ were, like the

* II Chronicles xxxiv.

Comparisons of Religions 41

ten tribes, torn from their county and exiled
to Babylon, never to be again a sovereign people,
excepting for a few years at one time imder the
government of one of the Maccabees.

As we have seen, the best and only rational
religions of the world have been and are the
Zoroastrian, Confucian, Buddhist, Christian,
Modem Jewish, and Mohammedan religions,
purest in their original ideals and ethics, and
always free, excepting the ancient Jewish, from the
degrading sacrifices and rituals of heathen reli-
gions. The sanction of heaven seems to have
attested to the inspiration in greater or less degree
of each of those religions and to the necessity for
them, in the divine economy, in the various ages
and countries of their origins, in that they each
still exist and have stood the tests of many cen-
turies, and are even yet great evolutionary factors
in the world of to-day. Hereafter when the mis-
sion of each, in the providence of God, is accom-
plished, they may, and doubtless will, all be
merged and absorbed into the faith of the greatest
of prophets, Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, and
all their temples become shrines of His universal
worship. Such, we believe, will be the finale of
the great political and religious evolutionary
elements of the age in the century before us.
"The History of the Worid," the Rev. Dr. Briggs
says, "is God's training and education of the
human race, and all the great religions of the

42 Evolution of Religions

world were factors in that training." Zoroaster's
was a grand religion, and, we think, second only
to Christianity, which was ultimately evolved
from it and the Mosaic economies. Three thou-
sand years ago it was the great religion of the
Orient. Its eternal fires, its nightly emblems of
Deity, substituted for His temporarily obscured
but grander emblem, the sun, blazed for many
centuries on hill and mountain tops from the
Euphrates to the Himalayas, and from the Per-
sian Sea to the Caspian, and were only extin-
guished in Persian blood, when the Moslems,
under the Caliph Omar, about the year 650 a.d.,
conquered Persia under the black banner of the
Prophet, and gave the followers of Zoroaster the
alternative of belief in the Koran, exile from
their native land, or the sword. After Zoroaster,
Moses, Confucius, and Buddha came in succession
as messengers of God to men, and were the expo-
nents of their own systems of faith, each grand,
pure, and beautiful, all monotheists, only differing
in some doctrines and forms of worship. The
ancient priesthood of Moses ceased to exist with
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.
Their gorgeous, half -barbaric sacrificial institu-
tions and ceremonies are only known in Bible
story. Jesus came, and His religion recognized
no sacrificial services. His sermons were expo-
sitions of the highest and noblest teachings of
Moses and the prophets, unfolding their lessons

Comparisons of Religions 43

of truth to all the world, Jew and Gentile alike,
and combining with them the doctrines of the
resurrection and immortality of the soul and
eternal life, tenets not taught, or if so only dimly
and indirectly, in the old Scriptures, but long
before taught in the Zend A vesta. His religion
was based on love; those of Zoroaster and Moses
on fear. The truth as it came from the lips of
Jesus and His Apostles (it was not WTitten in
books for a long time) spread rapidly over all the
countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea,
and in less than three centuries oven\^helmed the
gorgeous but sensual sacrificial worship and
magnificent temples of Eg^'-ptian, Grecian, and
Roman gods and goddesses; their priesthoods
vanished, and their memories only survive now
in classic lore and history.

CHAPTER III

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY

UP to the time of the triumph of Christianity
over Roman idolatry in the reign of the Em-
peror Constantine the Great, about the year 315
A.D., the simple doctrines of Jesus had been mainly
purely taught. There were no creeds to confuse
and fetter men's minds. The various churches
were independent of any outside control, and
their pastors taught only the plain tenets of
Christ and His Apostles, in which love and charity
to all men, faith in God, and following in the
footsteps of Jesus, were the great themes. A
triune Deity was imknown.

Edward E. Hale says: "Cardinal Newman put
the truth forcibly, but not too forcibly, when he
said of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, ' The
creeds of that early day make no mention in
their letter of the Catholic doctrine at all. They
make mention indeed of a three} But that there
is any mystery in the doctrine, that the three are
one, that they are co-equal, co-eternal, all omnipo-
tent, all incomprehensible, is not stated and never
could be gathered from them.' " He continues

* North American Review, vol. 148, p. 97.
44

Ancient Christianity 45

later:* "Here is the absolute religion which
Jesus Christ proclaimed to the world, faith, or a
steady belief in God and in His absolute presence ;
hope, a steady sense of immortality working in a
life which immortals lead; love, which is now
called ' altruism ' or a feeling on the part of every
man that he does not live for himself alone, but
that he lives for the whole race. These three
constitute the way of life, as Jesus Christ under-
stood it, and as He tried to make the world under-
stand it."

The doctrines of the early Christians were the
same as those preached by Arius, Pelagius, Celes-
tius, and the bishops and pastors of the Eastern
churches. Unitarianism in those early days was
the faith of Christians generally. But orthodox
interpretations and mysticisms, bigotry and fanat-
icism, \mder the influence of monastic and other
recluse religious orders, had already taken root,
and with other heresies and innovations in pure
Christianity were rapidly developing in that
superstitious age. Finally, at the Councils of
Nicea, 325 a.d., and of Carthage, 411 a.d., the
adherents of the Athanasian Creed, tmder the
leadership of the Roman pontiff, and many
other great Western bishops, triumphed over
liberal Christianity. By such incomprehensible
and mysterious tenets they vastly increased the
power of the Church in that benighted age and

> North American Review, vol. 148, p. loi.

46 Evolution of Religions

riveted their control over the souls and con-
sciences of men. The orthodox creed was adopted
only by a small majority at each council. The
followers of Arius and his colleagues were put
under the ban of the Roman Empire, which thus
in its decadence, after persecuting for centuries
the followers of Christ, espoused at last a mon-
grel and semi-pagan religion as the state worship
under the primacy of the bishop of Rome. From
those councils the dogmas of orthodoxy, the
departure of the Christian world from the faith
of the apostolic times, and the admixture of
pagan ceremonies and festivals in the worship of
the Church, date their prevalence, if not their
origin. Interpolations and alterations into the
text of the Scriptures were made to fit the new
creed and the fanaticism and bigotry of the
age. Ecclesiasticism was maturing its plans for
supreme domination over the minds and con-
sciences of men, and the Pope, with his consistory
of Cardinals, became the absolute arbiter for
centuries of future Christianity. The Apoc-
ryphal Books of the Old Testament universally
previously rejected by the early churches as
merely human productions without a shade of
inspiration, and now rejected as such by all
Protestant denominations throughout the world,
were during the fifth and sixth centuries a.d.
admitted by Rome into the sacred canon, as
were also the Apocalyptic dreams of St. John

Ancient Christianity 47

in the Book of Revelation, which had also
previously been denied admission into the New
Testament Canon. The amazing fables collected
and published some years ago by the Rev. S.
Baring-Gould in his book of "Legends of the
Patriarchs and Prophets," and also those pub-
lished by Rev. Bernard Pick in his " Apocryphal
Life of Jesus," were, during all the dark ages of
ignorance and superstition, of common belief in
the Christian world. They were supplemented
by tales of myriads of miracles of subsequent
saints and saintesses performed during a thousand
years in the ages succeeding the Apostles and
fully believed for fifteen hundred years.*

After the Councils of Nice and Carthage, the
true light of biblical inspiration became more
and more perverted and obscured by incorrect
renderings and interpolations of the original text,
and has only been partially restored and corrected
since the sixteenth century reformation in Europe.
During the century just closed, and especially of
late years, the liberal thought, independent
criticism, and widely extended research and
investigation of many great minds, notably Max
MuUer, Dr. Channing, Dr. Priestley, Theodore
Parker, Julius Wellhausen, Straus, Dr. Ernest
Renan, Rev. J. H. Mills, Dr. Savage, Eijdersheim,

' Lecky's "History of Rationalism in Europe." Maury's
'Legends of the Saints of the Middle Ages." Milman's
" History of Latin Christianity,"

48 Evolution of Religions

Dr. Charles Briggs, McGiffert, Hollis, and others
whose names are too numerous to mention here,
have brought about a great awakening in and
restoration of primitive Bible truth. The literary-
evolutions of this age in all fields of knowledge,
natural sciences, historical research, social and
political economies, and general religious inquiry,
are culminating in grander conceptions of the
Almighty, of the mission and teachings of Jesus,
and also of the works of Zoroaster, Confucius, and
Buddha, than have ever before been realized.
Their religions were for the world. Moses* was
only for Palestine — one people.

Indeed, the nineteenth century was in many
respects the most wonderful in all the annals
of time. It was an imparalleled epoch. The
far-reaching discoveries in all the domains of
science were more varied and of greater benefit
to the human race than the mere rudimentary
discoveries in all the preceding centuries. The
same may be said of mechanical arts and
machinery. More too was accomplished during
the last century in the extension of civilization
and Christianity than in all the previous years
since the Savior lived on earth. Practically,
excluding this Western continent, which had
already been partially settled by migrations
from Christian Europe, at the commencement
of the nineteenth century the limits of Christian
civilization were really more circumscribed in

Ancient Christianity 49

the rest of the world than they were before
the Moslem conquests in Asia and Africa in
630-800 A.D. All the Isles of the Paciiic and
Indian Oceans were a hundred years ago in
absolute heathen darkness. Now in nearly all
those islands, including the continent of Aus-
tralia and much of "Darkest Africa," the people
are civilized and Christianized, though the work
has been accomplished, it should in justice be
said, as much, or more, through the commercial
intercourse and government and arms of Christian
countries, notably of England, as through mission
work.

The Christianity of this age while not yet, as
preached and practiced by many sects, the same
broad and beautiful faith as taught by Jesus and
His Apostles, yet is essentially different from
and better than the illiberalism, intolerance,
inhumanity, and bigotry of four hundred or even
of one hundred years ago, when the dark theology
and predestination of John Calvin and Jonathan
Edwards largely voiced and led the religious
sentiments of the Christian world. Creeds once
believed tmiversally, though still used formally
by the orthodox denominations, are generally
regarded as mere antiquated and hollow services
now, and some of their supposed essentials of
faith are really believed by few ministers or lay-
men in their orthodox terms to-day. Liberalism
in religion, as in politics, is the trend of thought;

50 Evolution of Religions

and bigotry and superstition, allied with worn-
out and absurd confessions of faith, have little
influence over ordinarily intelligent men as com-
pared with a generation ago, and as factors in
religion are becoming dormant. Christ and His
Apostles and the early Christian Fathers for two
or three centuries had no rigid creeds. Why
should their successors have? The highest intel-
lects of our day, discarding the mysterious and
baseless doctrine of the trinity, as savoring of
old Egyptian and Indian mythologies, of the
Trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, or of Varuna,
Mithra, and Indra, and as unauthorized by the
Bible and derogatory to man's highest concep-
tion^ of the Almighty, believe now with Moses
and the prophets in their solemn and repeated
declaration of the imity of God, that "The Lord
our God is one God," and that Jesus Christ spoke
literally when He said, " My Father is greater than
I ; I can of mine own self do nothing.'' * God is
only and absolutely one. To this the one, first,
grand, central tenet of his faith, the Jew now, as
his fathers did, still clings with deathless
tenacity, the same as through all the exiles and
persecutions of eighteen centuries of bigoted
Christian fanaticism and intolerance.

Jesus we love and venerate. We believe in
Him as the Son of God, and the great teacher and
guide of men; and whatever terms of glory and

* John V. 30, xiv. 28.

Ancient Christianity 51

honor are given Him, we think He is entitled to
them in the highest sense. But whatever the
occasional ascriptions of His delegated power and
quasi-divinity may mean in biblical verse and
poetic story, they do not mean that Jesus is God.
There is nothing of the trinity in the Bible.
Jesus was undoubtedly divinely sent and com-
missioned to promulgate a new gospel of love
and immortality to the world, and for all the
world, Jew and Gentile, the great and the lowly,
grander than Moses and the prophets ever taught.
Such was Jesus' mission to the world. So he
taught on Mount Olivet in His great sermon, and
the only creed He ever enunciated or sanctioned
was contained in the peerless prayer which He
there formulated for His disciples as embodying
everything essential to be believed and followed.
Such a sublime prayer was never before uttered, or,
if uttered, never recorded. So simple, grand, and
all embracing, — "Love God, trust in Him, love
all men, and forgive, as ye shall be forgiven,
on sincere repentance." No more, no less. No
vicarious sacrifice, no atonement taught or even
hinted at. The great Chinese teacher Confucius
had laid down the Golden Rule six himdred years
before Jesus taught it, but he gave to his followers
no form of prayer. The world needs no other
creed than the Golden Rule and the Lord's
Prayer, and the spirit of that prayer is sufficient
for all human prayers. It is the seal of Jesus'

52 Evolution of Religions

sonship to God, of His brotherhood to man.
How all embracing and universal in application,
how humble and confiding in its sense of power and
assurance of acceptance, this wonderful petition
to the Eternal Father ! This brief but matchless
creed of divinity in imity, of liberty, equality,
fraternity ! There is in it — and we note it
again — no suggestion of the trinity, nor of total
depravity, nor of the doctrine of vicarious atone-
ment for sins as a prerequisite for the salvation
of men from eternal punishment. These dogmas
are all, as if purposely, ignored. Only the promise
of pardon and eternal love remains, *' Father, for-
give our sins as we forgive all who sin against us."
This prayer alone and absolutely, negatives the
creed of orthodoxy. In the suggestiveness of its
all-embracing petitions and significant omissions,
it is the creed of creeds and alone has the stamp
of divinity.

CHAPTER IV

MODERN RELIGIONS

TT is estimated by statisticians that there are
■'■ now about 1,400,000,000 people inhabiting
the earth, and they are supposed generally to be
believers in or adherents of the various systems
of religion now existing in the following propor-
tions of populations, viz :

Brahmans "... 90,000,000

Buddhists 450,000,000

Confucianists 150,000,000

Christians 400,000,000

Jews 10,000,000

Mohammedans 200,000,000

Mormons 2,000,000

Pagans 97,000,000

Zoroastrians 1,000,000

Total

1,400,000,000

Not many people in Christian countries, and few
indeed of other coimtries, even of the educated
classes, have any more than a general and super-
ficial acquaintance with any other religions of the
world than their owti. They may know generally
that the believers in those other systems than the

53

54 Evolution of Religions

Christian number considerably over two thirds
of all the inhabitants of the earth, but of the
comparative numbers of the followers of other
faiths, and of their doctrines and forms of worship,
they know very little, and all, excepting their
own, are regarded by the masses in Christian
countries as pagan or false religions. It would,
indeed, be a revelation to most people if the
simple theology and the generally pure and
beautiful ethics of the Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and
Confucian sacred books, and even of the Al
Koran, were made familiar to them, and they
could know that many of the grandest precepts
of Moses and the prophets and of the gospel of
the Christ had been taught in other far distant
regions from Palestine centuries before the Savior's
time, and in the case of Zoroastrianism even cen-
turies anterior to Moses and the Ten Command-
ments. Confucianism and Buddhism were the
great religions of China and India five hundred
years before the Savior preached in Palestine.

We have said considerable already about those
three other ancient religions, and of course any-
thing like an exposition of their systems would be
foreign to the scope and purpose of this book,
however interesting and instructive it might be.
Hence, we only propose to make a brief com-
parison of some of the tenets of those religions
with the Jewish and Christian.

Of Brahmanism some exposition of its sacred

Modern Religions 55

books, the Rig-Vedas, would, of course, be inter-
esting to many, but for purposes of illustration
and comparison with the other modem religions,
their ethics are so mixed up with pagan and
polytheistic rites and teachings, and the books
so full of fabulous history and miracles, that little
benefit would result from a general synopsis of
them. While it is one of the oldest religions of
the world and still has many devotees, and its
moral teachings are generally good, yet it is a
system of many gods, some of them wicked and
impure, and all its worships so entirely out of
harmony with the age that the world were best
without it. Its decadence is rapidly progressing.
Excepting to the historian and student of San-
skrit literature, its system of worship, its priests,
castes, and sacred books do not merit much con-
sideration or present any great attractions.

As to Moslemism, it may be said of the Al
Koran that its moral teachings are mainly good;
its monotheism and absolute prohibition of all
forms and symbols of trinity, or of any manifesta-
tions or representation of God, or any adoration
of the same, are grand and sublime. Morally,
however, it is on a lower plane than Christianity.
It allows polygamy and slavery, as does the
Hebrew Bible, degrades woman by taking scarcely
any note of her as a participant in the religion
and hope of the faithful followers of the Prophet
in this life, and scarcely recognizes her prospects

56 Evolution of Religions

of heaven, and then only as menials for the brave
warriors who fought under his banners, and for
the beautiful houris who are companions of their
pleasures there. Its historical sketches and allu-
sions to the old patriarchs, prophets, and apostles,
are merely plagiarisms from our Bible, without
its beauty of style. Hence in these, and in many
other respects, this religion is inferior to our
Scriptures. A comparison and parallel with them
would be unattractive and useless. It is a great
literary production, and doubtless if translated
so as to bring out all the prophets' ideas in the
beauties and natural meter of its Arabic poetry
would be a very interesting and attractive book.
Islamism is on the wane; its palmiest days are
passed. It served the world well in the provi-
dence of God in rescuing Arabia, Northern Africa,
and Western Asia from the semi-idolatrous, half-
pagan image worship of the Savior and Mary his
mother, a degenerate Christianity into which those
countries were lapsing after Rome, the Empire,
and the Church had crushed out Unitarianism
or Arianism by intolerance and persecution.
It has preserved in those lands the worship of
Allah, the only one God, and it conserved for
centuries, literature and the sciences from the
destructive barbarism and godless superstitions
of the Dark Ages of Europe. In fact, the Moslem
universities in Spain, during the six centuries
of its supremacy there, were the only oases in the

Modern Religions 57

European literary desert of that period. During
the same time Arabia produced many great
scholars and scientists. The renowned Sultan
Saladin was a liberal patron of learning.

In the evolutions of time and the progress of
education and civilization, those conditions have
changed, and Islamism instead of being, as once,
a conserv^er, has become an obstacle in the paths
of progress and civilization, and the diffusion of a
purer Christianity than it once supplanted. There
are really many beautiful things in the Koran,
although Dr. Sale's translation of it is said to give
but an indifferent version of it. We append here
for comparison literal poetic translations of half
a dozen Suras by a brilliant oriental scholar,
Daniel J. Rankin.

Sura I.

In the name of the merciful God, the pitiful,

Praise be to God, to the Lord of the World,

The merciful, pitiful one,

King of the day on which all men are judged.

We worship Thee, asking for aid.

Lead us in the path of those guided aright,

The path of those pleasing to Thee ;

Not in the path of those causing Thee wrath,

Nor of those wandering astray.

Sura ex.

In the name of the merciful God, the pitiful.
When the help of God shall come

58 Evolution of Religions

And the victory be won,
And mankind in troops ye see
Unto God's religion flee,
Then extol thy Lord in praise,
His forgiveness ask always.
He His pardon never stays.

Sura CXI.

Shall perish his hands, yea, perish himself,

Abu Laheb, called Father of Flames.

Nor profit his wealth, nor profit his pelf.

He shall be burned in a furnace of flames.

His wife shall carry the wood on her arms.

Bound round her neck with a rope from the palms.

Sura CXII.

In the name of the merciful God, the pitiful,
Say God, He is one, God is eternal.
He neither begets, nor was begotten,
Nor is there with Him any to liken.

Sura CXIII.

In the name of the merciful God, the pitiful,
Say to the Lord of Dawning, for refuge do I flee,
From evil that hath been created and may follow me,
And from the harm of darkening night when I o'er-

shadowed be,
And from the ill of women, blowing on the magic knot.
And from the hand of envier, when envying my lot.

Modern Religions 59

Sura CXIV.

In the name of the merciful God, the pitiful,

Say to the Lord of all mankind, for refuge do I fly,

The King of men, the God of men,

From the withdrawing whisperer,

Who in men's hearts doth lie.

From "sin and men, deliver me."

Of the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, little
need be said additional. Their Bible, like ours,
divided into a number of books of fabled histories
and prophecies, is but an insipid imitation of
scriptural style. It is needless to say that it is
all fiction, without a scintilla of evidence to
support any of its stories. It is said to have
been originally written about 181 5 by Rev. Sol.
Spaulding, of Washington, Pennsylvania, as a
fiction, printed in Pittsburg by one Sydney
Rigdon, and by him put into Joseph Smith's
hands. Perhaps together they framed the story
of its discovery in Western New York. It speaks
of God and Jesus Christ much in the style of our
Scriptures, teaches good morals, and is thoroughly
orthodox on the doctrines of the trinity, vicarious
atonement for sins, eternal pimishment, etc.
It has its many miracles. The custom of poly-
gamy is not allowed in the Mormon Bible, and is
especially prohibited in the Book of Jacob,
chapter ii. After the Mormon migration to
Utah in 1845-46, subsequent revelations, it is

6o Evolution of Religions

claimed, were given to Smith's successor, Brigham
Young, authorizing plural marriages for the
purpose of more rapidly increasing their numbers
and building up Zion (as they called their desert
home) against their enemies, and we know they
were not slow in obeying the divine will in this
matter. Singularly enough, and contrary to the
general opinion of non-Mormons, so far as the
author has learned by contact with the Mormons
in Utah and elsewhere years ago, and from
personal conversation with many Mormon women,
the women were generally more enthusiastic in
favor of plural marriages than the men. They
were, of course, in favor of building up Zion
rapidly, but the principal reason they gave for
wishing to have female partners in marital
rights and duties was that, as their husbands
were mostly agriculturists, gardeners, dairymen,
and stock raisers, the labor of opening up homes
in the Utah valleys and the cares of housekeeping
would be divided and made easier and business
made more profitable by several wives working
together, and their social opportunities would be
better. This was doubtless true in their isolated
homes.

Confucianism, the religion of two hundred
millions of the Chinese, embracing nearly all the
educated people of that ancient empire, taught
in the Analects of its great founder, and his co-
laborer, Mencius, is a system of rules and ethics

Modern Religions 6i

for social life and citizenship which has no
superior. Confucius taught the existence and
almighty power of God, but these being subjects
beyond his exact knowledge or comprehension,
he devoted his Hfe and great talents mainly to
teaching his fellow-men their duties in this world.
Says Professor J. Thomas:' "The Chinese sage
has enjoyed a renown more widely extended than
that of any other person of the human race,
excepting Jesus Christ, and none other than the
latter has, perhaps, excelled his teachings in
simplicity, practical sincerity, and lofty morality."
Their moral plane is always high throughout the
Analects, and they are in reference to religion,
totally immarred by any repulsive laws, barba-
rous rites, absurd sacrifices, or impure social
rules. "What you do not want done unto your-
self, do not do imto others ' ' is the Golden Rule as
given in their Bible with more terseness than in
our Scriptures.^ Confucius' precepts of justice,
forbearance under injuries, benevolence, politeness,
and charity, or love, are complements of the best
taught in any religion. The virtues of conjugal
fidelity, chastity in all, purity of life, devotion to
parents, love of children, and kindness and
veneration for the aged, indeed all the virtues
which men and women should practice are most
strongly enjoined. He was a pure, devoted, great

* Johnson's Encyclopedia, p. iii.

' The Analects, Book v, ch. 2, and Book xv, ch. 23.

62 Evolution of Religions

teacher of men, and who can say not an inspired
teacher? And if from God "cometh every good
and perfect gift," why not, and worthy to be the
associate of Jesus Christ ? Bigots claim that only
Bible characters were inspired, but why not great
characters of other nations, equally as good, and
equally earnest workers for good?

We next examine the Zend Avesta of the dis-
ciples of Zoroaster, and the tri-Pitakas of the
Buddhists, as the sacred books of those religions
are called, each claimed by believers in them to
be revelations from God, and in them we find
declarations of the attributes and character of
God and of His moral laws as grand, beautiful,
and pure as any found in our Bible. Zoroaster
was a prophet of the world's youth, according to
history about 2000 B.C., or only three hundred
and fifty years after the Deluge, according to
Bible chronology. Ancient Persian history gives
his date, however, as about 2500 e.g. He was
probably a contemporary of Abraham, the
"Father of the Faithful." Shem, the son of
Noah, lived, according to same chronology, until
about 1846 B.C., and, therefore, Zoroaster was a
contemporary of his also, and, doubtless, as did
Abraham, imbibed his religion from Shem. The
religion of Zoroaster and Abraham was doubtless
the same, and so coming down from Noah, the
father of Shem, was the oldest and purest faith
of the world, antedating the Mosaic system by

Modern Religions 63

six hundred years. Buddha lived about 600 B.C.,
and was probably a contemporary of the great
Chinese sage Confucius. Zoroaster, Buddha, and
Confucius were worthy confreres of Moses and
the Christ in their divine missions of religion.
These ancient religions of Zoroaster, Buddha, and
Confucius once each influenced mankind as much,
and jointly now have and always had far more
adherents who believed and died in those faiths
than Judaism and Christianity, now or ever,
combined. Zoroastrianism, for many centuries
when Judaism was hardly known outside of the
narrow borders of Canaan, was the universal
religion of all Central Asia, and although in the
evolutions of time its followers now only number
a million or two, there was a time, says Max
Miiller,* "when the worship of Zoroaster's God,
Ormuzd or Ahura Mazda, threatened to rise
triumphant on the ruins of the temples of all other
Gods. If the battles of Marathon and Salamis
had been lost and Greece had succtunbed to Persia,
the state religion of the empire of Cyrus the
Great, which was the worship of Ormuzd, the only
God, might have become the religion of the
whole civilized world. Persia, under Cyrus, had
absorbed the Assyrian and Babylonian empires;
the Jews were either under Persian captivity or
under Persian sway in Palestine. The sacred
monviments of Eg>^pt had been mutilated by the

* " A German Workshop," p. 159.

64 Evolution of Religions

hands of Persian soldiers who worshiped the
only one God and who abhorred the idolatrous
emblems on temples, sepulchers, and shrines.
The edicts of the great King, " the King of Kings,"
were sent to India, to Greece, to Scythia, and to
Egypt, and if by the grace of Ahura Mazda,
Darius, the successor of Cyrus, had crushed the
liberties of Greece at Marathon, the pure faith
of Zoroaster might easily have superseded the
Olympic fables. This was the Cyrus the Great
who ordered the building of the second temple
at Jerusalem and whose edict for that purpose,
issued in the first year of his reign in Babylon,
536 B.C.,* proclaimed Zoroaster's God, in whose
faith he had been raised and crowned, to be the
"Lord God of Heaven," who had given him all
the kingdoms of the earth, and He was none
other than Ahura Mazda, the same as the God
of Israel.

The power of Persia was broken by the Mace-
donian conqueror, Alexander the Great, several
centuries afterward, and she never again recovered
her pristine grandeur, though long afterwards
she was a powerful enemy of Rome. Finally,
in 634 A.D., the old empire was overthrown
and her people subjugated by the Saracens under
the Caliph Omar. In fact, it is due to these
ruthless Mohammedan invaders that the religion
of ancient Persia, once the glory of the world, is

* Book of Ezra, ch. i. verses i, 2, 3, 4.

Modern Religions 65

now, and has been for the last thousand years,
a mere curiosity to the historian, though still
believed in by some two millions of brave and
devoted worshipers in India. The Moslem con-
querors swept Persia with the besom of destruc-
tion tmder the black banners of the Caliph,
compelling the people to abandon their grand old
faith, and accept the religion of the Koran, or
perish by the sword. A few brave and noble
men who would not apostatize, escaped into
India and were protected by the Buddhist
monarchs, and are now generally known by out-
siders as"Parsees, Guebers, or Fire-Worshipers."
These names, though not recognized by the
Zoroastrians, were given to them by their enemies
on account of their being Parsis, Parsees (from
Persia) and " Fire- Worshipers," on accoimt of
their custom of maintaining in their temples and
other places of worship a perpetual fire as an
emblem of Deity, and also from their habit of
bowing daily in prayer to God at simrise and
sunset before the sun as the great symbol of the
Almighty, bestowing, like its Creator, light, heat,
and happiness on all the world. These people
have been immortalized by Tom Moore in his
beautiful poem of "The Fire- Worshipers," one
of the Lalla Rookh romances.

Such have been the mutations of this religion,
the oldest of time, and from which other religions,
certainly the Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan,

66 Evolution of Religions

in turn, derived much of their traditions and
grandest doctrines. Undoubtedly the Bible story
of creation, the Garden of Eden, the fall of man,
and the belief in Satan, were derived from Zoroas-
trian legends, and, through the Persian and
Magian priests, communicated to Ezra and
other Scripture compilers during the Captivity.
Many thousands of Jews settled in Persia, as we
learn from the story of Queen Esther, and from
Josephus, numerous descendants of whom have
ever since remained there. The Zoroastrian was
a great religion, sublime in its conceptions of
deity, grandest in its early days before the incor-
poration of Satan as a coordinate god, and other
corruptions of Chaldean Magian worship crept
into its beautiful theological and moral code. In
after-times, after those innovations, the Zoroas-
trians undoubtedly believed in dual deities, one
supremely good, the other supremely evil, both
possessing nearly equal powers, at least on earth,
if not elsewhere. But such was not the original
teaching of Zoroaster, but incorporated into his
religion by the Magian priests after the union of
Persia and Media and the conquest of Babylon.
He was a great leader of men, and we believe his
mission was from God Undoubtedly during the
Jewish exile, as we can gather from the writings
of those times, and the Apocryphal Books of the
Bible subsequently written, the belief in Satan
was then first adopted by the Jews, and with

Modern Religions 67

conception of his powers as a subject, if not a
servant of God, modified from the Magian behef in
Satan as a deity, was incorporated into their post-
exihan religion and brought back to Palestine on
the return of the exiles. This we think is clearly-
shown by the Apocryphal Books of the Bible,
and all other subsequent Jewish literature, includ-
ing books of Daniel, Job, Esther, and Ecclesias-
tes, and by the entire absence of the name of
Satan from the ante-exilian books of the Bible.
Kings, Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, and Jonah
were also, imdoubtedly, post-exilian books, com-
posed or compiled from previous manuscripts by
Ezra and Nehemiah. Hence several references
in Chronicles and Psalms to Satan.

Now, in the later Zoroastrian system the
contest between Ormuzd, the infinitely good being,
and Ahriman, the infinitely evil one, each equal
to and independent of the other, was, granting
the premises to be true, philosophically logical.
But in the Jewish and Christian economies, our
God being an all holy and omnipotent Being, and
Satan the creature, and dependent for his existence
and power upon God's will, the endless contest
for the souls of men and for the supremacy of
good over evil, which we are taught in the ortho-
dox creed is ever going on between God and
Satan, must be a chimera, a gross absurdity,
according to the premises, and entirely illogical
in the forum of reason. Assuming the orthodox

68 Evolution of Religions

premises to be correct, there can be no antagonism
between God and Satan, no .evil done, or power
for evil on the part of Satan, excepting such as
God permits, and if He permits. He wills. If
Satan exists and is subject to God's power and
will, his work, evil as it is, must be permissive of
God. There needs no argument to prove this
proposition; there can be no other conclusion
from the premises. No amotint of orthodox
casuistry or sophistry can evade or overthrow
the conclusion. And hence not being able to
evade the conclusion, I am necessarily compelled,
as a believer in God's infinite goodness, to reject
the premises, i.e., the existence and work of
Satan as untrue. As supposed facts, they are
absolutely contrary to every one of God's univer-
sally admitted attributes. Hence, it logically
follows that no such being as Satan, portrayed as
he is in orthodoxy and the Book of Revelation,
exists, or can exist, in God's creation. He is
solely a myth. The doctrine, if it were true,
either dethrones God or makes Him a particeps
in evil. Neither proposition is true, both are
false. Hereafter this subject will be more
fully discussed in considering Eden and Jesus'
temptation.

In Buddha's religion, there was no evil deity
possessing quasi almighty powers, but in many
other respects, excepting the Buddhist doctrine
of reincarnation, or the transmigration of souls.

Modern Religions 69

which disfigures that religion, it was similar to
Zoroaster's. In many respects those teachers
Were ahke. Both were princes of royal blood.
Buddha was heir to a throne. Zoroaster is said
to have been a king. Both became prophets of
God and apostles of humanity. Both devoted
their lives to the service of God and the welfare
of their fellow-men as nobly and imselfishly as
any of the Hebrew or Christian prophets and
apostles, ay, as ever Jesus did, and doubtless
all three were inspired by the same God and
grandly did the work assigned to them in the
divine education of the human race. In partial
illustration of the teachings of Zoroaster we will
quote here the Zarthosi, or Parsee Creed, which
has been transmitted down from Zoroaster's day,
as the Parsees claim, and is doubtless the oldest
religious creed existing. We quote here from
Max Miiller.* Muller died in October, 1900. His
death was a sad loss to the world. He was a
great and good man, broad-minded, liberal, and
the grandest philosopher and scholar of the
century, universally kno^vn, loved, and honored.
Here is Zoroaster's creed:

First. We believe in only one God, and do not
believe in any other God but Him.

Second. He is the God who created the heavens
and the earth, the stars and the moon, the sun, the

» "Chips from a German Workshop," by Max Muller. Edi-
tion of 1877, pp. 169-174 inclusive.

70 Evolution of Religions

angels, the fire, the water, and all things of the two
worlds, and all the four elements. That God we
believe in. Him we worship. Him we invoke. Him
only we adore.

Third. Whoever believes in any other God than
this is an infidel and shall suffer the punishment of
hell.

Fourth. Our God has neither face nor form, color
nor shape nor fixed abode. There is none other
like Him. He is himself singly such a glory that we
cannot properly praise or describe Him, nor our
minds comprehend Him.

Fifth. Our religion is the worship of God. We re-
ceived it from God's true Prophet. The true Prophet,
Zoroaster, brought the religion to us from God,

Sixth. God has sent these commands through His
Prophet the exalted Zorthorst, viz. : To know God
only as one, to know the Prophet, the exalted Zor-
thorst, as the true Prophet, to believe the religion
and the Avesta, i.e., "living words" brought by
him, as true beyond all manner of doubt, to believe
in the goodness of God, not to disobey any of the
commands of the Maz-di-ashma religion, to avoid
all evil deeds, to exert ourselves constantly in doing
good, to pray five times a day to God, to hope for
Heaven, and to fear hell, to consider certain the day
of general destruction and resurrection, to believe in
the reckonings and judgment on the fourth day after
death, to remember always that God has done what
He wills, and shall always do what He wills, and to
always face the sun or some luminous object while
worshiping God as an emblem of His light and
wisdom.

Modern Religions 71

Seventh. If any one commits sin under the belief
that he shall be somebody else, or that somebody
else will atone for him, both the deceiver and the
deceived shall be damned to the day of Rata Khez.
There is no savior. In the other world you shall
receive the retui:n according to your actions. Your
savior is your deeds and God himself. He is alone
the pardoner and the giver. If you repent of your
sins and reform, and if the great Judge considers
you worthy of pardon, or would be merciful, He alone
can and will save you.*

So teach the Parsees or modem Zoroastrians of
India, and they claim that this creed has come
down grand and sublime, as most of it is, from
their great prophet of forty centuries ago, almost
in the world's morning, and which doubtless had
the sanction of Noah, Shem, and Abraham. Is
it not a beautiful faith, safe to live and die by,
and a fitting companion to the Decalogue of
Moses and the sermons of Jesus, though many
centuries older than both? By substituting the
name of Jesus for Zoroaster would not his ethics
be nearly identical with the Savior's? Wherein
do Moses and the prophets and the Nazarene
excel Zoroaster, excepting in the Christ's messages,
as properly xmderstood, of universal love and
universal salvation? Zoroaster's was a pure
and simple faith. He worshiped the same God,
and for many centuries his religion had a wider

• Appendix, Note E, pp. 216, 217, 218.

7? Evolution of Religions

sway than either of the others. Each was a
messenger to men of the same God. There was
this difference between the followers of Zoroaster
and of Moses, and it was greatly to the glory of
the former. The Zoroastrians were, as history
and traditions inform us, always faithful to their
religion and never worshiped any other god,
nor any forms of deity or idols, while the Isra-
elites, notwithstanding their alleged theocratic
government and closer and miraculous com-
munion with God, and the traditions of the
wonderful miracles of which, we are told, they
and their ancestors were the witnesses and bene-
ficiaries, relapsed very often through utter for-
getfulness of Jehovah and their sacrificial worship,
and covenant obligations with Him, into long
periods of brutal idolatry and debased paganism.
Nor did the Zoroastrians ever observe or perform
any degrading sacrificial rites. These be unpala-
table truths probably to Jews and Christians and
such as, we fear, many of them do not often con-
sider, but nevertheless they are truths, con-
firmed by history, ancient and modem, and
above all, as to the Hebrews, by their own sacred
books. For the most part, the books of Judges,
Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, and of all the
prophets, are records of the gross wickedness and
idolatries of the "Chosen People," and of their
forgetfulness of and rebellion against God.

We propose only to deal with and assert truths

Modern Religions 73

in these pages, so far as we know them or can
gather them up, utterly regardless of stereotyped
beliefs and dogmas, the cavils of sectarianism
and religious bigotry or partisan histories.
Doubtless the fourth commandment of the Zo-
roastrian creed was especially framed to prohibit
any \'isible representations of the Almighty or
any form of manifestations or divisions of His
qualities or attributes, even more forcibly than in
the Mosaic Decalogue, so that there might not
be any idolatrous worship nor any semblance of
idolatry of any kind, no divisions of persons, nor
other mystical or mythical conceptions of God.
Judging from the Parsee creed, as well as from
fragments of ancient Persian songs and other
fragments of still more ancient gathas or hymns
supposed to have been composed by Zoroaster
himself,^ it is extremely doubtful whether
Zoroaster himself ever taught of Satan as a deity,
or demi-god, or of his equal control of the physical
and moral government of the world with God,
as was held in some shape in after-times by the
priests and ]\Iagii of Media and Babylon. Doubt-
less his teachings about Augro-Mainyos, the evil
one, and his powers were greatly exaggerated
in subsequent ages by the Magii, the more strongly
to influence and control the people, amidst the
wealth, luxury, and extravagances of the Persian
and Babylonian empires, in order that they might

* Rawlinson's "Ancient Religions," pp. 75, 76, 77.

74 Evolution of Religions

through the superstition and fears of behevers,
reap a golden harvest, and secular as well as
religious domination. Certainly the same tac-
tics were used, and with great success, by the
ecclesiastics of Christendom during the Dark
Ages of Eiirope, and as really they have always
been exerted in greater or less degree by all
religious hierarchies.

CHAPTER V

BUDDHISM. THE TRINITY, ETC.

NEXT we come to supplement the doctrines of
Zoroastrianism with a summary of the teach-
ings of Sakya-Manu — Gaut-ama, — or Buddha
the Great Prophet of the Himalayas, six centuries
before Christ, and compare them also briefly
with Judaism and Christianity. Again we quote
from Max Muller because he was imequaled in
knowledge, candor, and fearlessness of expres-
sion as a historian, Oriental, scholar and Christian.
He says: "Besides the five great commandments
of Buddha, viz., not to kill, not to steal, not to
commit adultery, not to lie, not to get dnmk,
every shade of vice, hypocrisy, anger, pride,
suspicion, greediness, covetousness, gossiping,
and cruelty, even to animals, is guarded against
by special precept. Among the virtues com-
manded by Buddha, we find not only reverence
of parents, care for children, submission to author-
ity, gratitude for kindness and favors, moderation
in time of prosperity, submission in time of trial,
equanimity at all times, but other virtues im-
known to any heathen system of morality, such
as the duty of forgiving insults and injuries, and

75

76 Evolution of Religions

not rewarding evil with evil, but with good. All
virtues, we are told, spring from Maitri, and this
word "Maitri" can only be translated by the
words "Charity and Love." ^ What more or
better things in morals did Moses and Jesus
teach? Did Jesus get any of His incomparable
beatitudes and his wonderful lessons of mercy
and forgiveness from Buddha's religion? Doubt-
less, for Buddha's laws and precepts of mercy
are superior to many teachings of Moses and the
prophets of Israel. And why should we say that
Jesus was inspired and sent of God to teach the
world, but that Buddha was not, when their
lessons and work were the same ? Divest ourselves
of the sectarian influences under which we were
brought up, and of narrow, intolerant bigotry,
and we should feel that both were sent of God.
They had the same Heavenly Father, and were
animated by the same mission of love to man-
kind. There is not a grander record in human
annals. They may be searched in vain, for such
a sublime renunciation of earthly power, wealth,
and fame, of pomp and pleasure, of self-sacri-
ficing devotion and lifelong labor for the amelio-
ration of human suffering and promotion of
happiness on earth and in the hereafter, than
is found in the life of Buddha. Such are the
leading tenets of his religion. Son of the Em-
peror Suddhodana and heir to his Northern

* Muller's "Chips from a German Workshop," p. 219.

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. 77

Hindoostanee throne, Buddha in his young man-
hood, for lo've of God and his fellow-men, re-
nounced home, power, and fame, and all earthly
pleasures through a long life, as did Jesus of Naz-
areth in a much shorter one, went about in humble
garb teaching and doing good, curing diseases and
alleviating misery, dependent upon the people,
among whom he traveled and labored, for his
daily bread. He lived a life of as utterly unself-
ish devotion and self-abnegation in his work as
Christ did. Verily, he was the Hindoostanee
Christ.

The narratives by his biographers, of the
theophanic conception of his mother, the Empress
Mayadeva, and of Buddha's miraculous birth,
are very similar to those of Jesus' conception and
birth in the Gospels, and doubtless both are
myths, as are also the legends of Buddha's many
miracles. Really differing only in the fact that
Buddha's parents were great, wealthy, and
powerful, and Jesus' obscure and poor, there
is a wonderful resemblance in their lives and
work. And that upon the mission of both the
seal of divine approval has been set, is found in
the wonderful success of their work of good, and
the millions, yes, hundreds of millions, in many
lands who have been devoted followers of each,
and humble converts to their teachings in the
centuries past. As the Christian faith did, and
solely upon its merits, the religion of Buddha

7^ Evolution of Religions

rapidly spread over all India and Eastern Asia,
Thibet, China, and Japan, amalgamating in China
to a great extent with Confucianism, in which
there were no ethical or theological antagonisms
or differences, but generally an harmonious
accord, and with all its vicissitudes nearly
supplanting idolatrous Brahmanism in Southern
India, and to-day probably numbers more follow-
ers than Judaism and Christianity combined.

Under other conditions than those then exist-
ing, Buddhism would doubtless have spread over
Persia and Western Asia also, but meeting on the
northern confines of India with the equally pure
and grand religion of Zoroaster, though somewhat
sterner in its worship and forms, there was no
occasion, it would seem, in the providence of
God, for its further progress westward, and
consequently it did not extend in that direction
beyond the boundaries of Media and Persia.
Comparatively few Christians know anything
about other religions, especially about Buddhism,
and consider it merely as one of the pagan systems
of old. Its holy books, the "Tri Pitakas," or
Three Baskets of Knowledge and of Wisdom,
like the Zend Avesta of the Zoroastrians and our
Bible, have many impossible miracles and extrav-
agant legends, but in their theology and ethics
pale but little in the light of Moses and the
prophets and are worthy coadjutors of Christian-
ity. Read the bible of Buddha, fellow-Christians,

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. 79

if you have the opportunity; reject its defects
and superstitious legends, but, as St. Paul says,
"Examine all things and hold fast to that which
is good," and be manly, liberal, and catholic in
your treatment of this religion, indeed of all
religions. We know that much is said about
the superior influences of Christianity, and fre-
quent comparisons are made of the social and
intellectual conditions of the people of coun-
tries in which other religions are dominant, and
countries under Christian belief. It is, we admit,
true now, and has been for two or three centuries
the fact, that the Christian nations of Europe
and America have been in the van of civilization
and intellectual and social progress, and that
the conditions of the masses of the people have
been better than the average in Asiatic countries.
Of course much of Africa has been in intense
pagan darkness, and with that continent and the
Mohammedan countries of Western and Central
Asia, like Siberian Russia, imder abject despotism
of government, and the provinces of Hindustan
under the curse of blighting and decaying Brah-
manism, there can be no comparison with Christian
countries.

I admit the vast superiority of Christianity,
Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Confucianism, as
taught by the ancient teachers of those religions,
over Mohammedanism, and that broad, liberal,
and expansive Christianity is superior to all

8o Evolution of Religions

other faiths. But much is owing to racial traits
and vigor. We must concede that much of the
advanced position in this age of Christian nations
and Christian civilization is due to the wonder-
ful growth and increasing power in the last two
centuries of the great germanic and Anglo-Saxon
races, developing hberty, culture, refinement,
social and moral progress and advanced ideas of
liberal governments beyond anything hereto-
fore known. Such development is mostly due
to learning, science, and the general diffusion of
knowledge. The Church has been generally hostile
to science and its discoveries, and only doggedly
accepted its results when compelled to. Nearly
all the wonderful progress and development of
the world and ameliorations of human conditions
during the past two centuries are due to the
peoples of those races, vastly superior in natural
and inherited abilities to the Semitic and other
Asiatic and African races, as well as to other
branches of the great Aryan race. But com-
paring European Christianity of the period of its
mastery over the Roman Empire, 315 a.d., and
the twelve himdred years of the Dark Age of
Europe, until the Germanic Reformation, and
indeed until about the year 1700 a.d., with the
Buddhist and Confucianist countries of Northern
India, China, and Japan, and the ancient Persian
Empire imder Zoroastrianism, and the balance
sheets of superstition, clerical tyranny, and

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. 8i

corruption, oppressive governments, terrible wars,
religious persecutions, and the general miserable
conditions of the people of European countries
with those of Asia under Buddhistic, Confucian,
and even Moslem rule, would show very little,
if any, balance to the credit side of so-called
Christian governments for all that long period of
time, — fourteen hundred years, — during which
Christianity had complete control in all Europe.
And we are not considering at all in this estimate
the Zoroastrian religion, or its influence, for the
number of its adherents, since the conquest of
Persia in 634 a.d. by the Moslems, has been too
inconsiderable to cut any important figure in the
destinies of any Asiatic countries.

What more terrible wars ravaged Asia during
those fourteen hundred years than the European
wars, aside from the Mohammedan conquests?
Where were the awful persecutions of the Savoy-
ards, Albigenses, and Waldenses surpassed, the
horrors of the Inquisition, the awful massacre
by Christians of fellow-Christians on Saint Bar-
tholomew's eve in 1572, and the atrocities of the
Thirty Years' religious war in Europe ? Even the
barbarities of the Christian Crusaders were for-
gotten in the humanities of the great Saracen
soldier, Saladin. With the same races of people
and imder the same conditions of education
and general intelligence, it is at least problemat-
ical whether the influences of Zoroastrianism,

82 Evolution of Religions

Buddhism, and Confucianism would not have been
as humanizing and mercifiil as those of European
Christianity during the Dark and Middle Ages, and
certainly better than the example of the Israelites
as taught in the Mosaic history.

Gradually, we believe, as seems to be the trend
of social and religious evolutions, and consequently
for the general welfare of mankind, with the
progress of knowledge and civilization, those
old faiths will pass away, and all that is good
and ennobling in them be merged in a broader
Christianity than known to the past, which will
eventually absorb them into the harmony of one
world-wide and universal religion. The great
quintette of prophets, Zoroaster, Moses, Confucius,
Buddha, and Jesus Christ, all, and the last named
preeminently so, were each inspired of God, and
the lives and teachings of all had the same ob-
jects in view, self-renunciation of men, service for
God, and the redemption of mankind from sin
and folly, to lives of goodness, virtue, and useful-
ness here, in the assured hope of happiness and
immortality hereafter. If from Christianity is
eliminated the doctrine of the Trinity, then there
could be no reason why Christians and Jews,
Zoroastrians, Confucianists, and Buddhists, yea,
and Moslems, could not associate as brothers, and
all worship in the same temples, notwithstanding
minor differences of forms and rites. All these
acknowledge the same fimdamental truths, viz.,

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. S^

the universal fatherhood and sovereignty of One
God, and behef in immortaHty and eternal life.
But for the dogma of the Trinity, Jews and
Christians long ago would have fraternized. In
the early centuries most of the Christians were
of the Jewish race. But after that dogma became
the creed of the dominant Catholic Church, and
all unitarians and dissenters were persecuted and
martyred, conversions from the Jews ceased.
The Catholic Church tolerated Jews who followed
Moses and the prophets and believed in only one
God, but would not tolerate Christian disbelief
in the -Trinity. Hence the adamantine wall of
division existing between the Jews and Christians
to this day, but we believe in time, Hke all error,
it will tumble down of itself as did the fabled
walls of Jericho.

The Trinity is not taught in the Bible anywhere.
The texts in the New Testament that are tor-
tured in that direction are mainly perv^ersions or
interpolations of the original. Most of the Jews
now believe in the divine mission of Jesus Christ,
and with the doctrine of the Trinity eliminated
from Christianity there would be no serious
differences with modem Judaism, and the teach-
ings of Moses and the prophets, of Jesus and His
Apostles, would compose one sacred book for Jew
and Gentile, harmonizing with all other faiths,
excepting in non-essentials, which will ultimately,
we believe, and in the not very remote future,

84 Evolution of Religions

be the divine evolution of all religions. Says
Count Leo Tolstoi, the great Russian writer:
"Yes! it is true, I deny an incomprehensible
Trinity, and the fable regarding the fall of man,
which is absurd in our day. It is true I deny
the sacrilegious story of a God bom of a virgin
to redeem the human race. But God Spirit, God
Love, God the sole principle of all things, in Him
I believe, and in eternal life."

And believing in one God, the All Holy and
Wise Creator and Ruler of the Universe, from
whom all things are, and contrary to whose su-
preme will nothing can be or happen, we must, it
follows, believe that all religions which ever have
existed, fulfilled some purposes in His economy,
and were adapted to the moral and intellectual
conditions of the people and to the ages in which
they flourished. While some were good and grand
morally, and some very inferior, comparatively,
in intellectual and moral standards, as we measure
at this day, yet they all must have fulfilled the
divine purposes in the education and training
of the human race, in the infinite school, the
lowest forms of religion being better than none
at all, doing some good and teaching the peoples
some truths which otherwise they had not learned,
and restraining them from many vices. While
even the highest and best religions, though very
good, and proclaimed by inspired men, had in
their systems human imperfections, the Almighty

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. 85

teaching through the ministry of imperfect, falHble,
finite men, only what their followers at the time
could comprehend and assimilate into their lives
and requiring only such measure of service as
they were capable of giving according to the
material, social, intellectual, and religious environ-
ments of the times.

St. Paul says : " And the times of this ignorance,
God winked at, but now commandeth all men
everywhere to repent." * Upon these conditions
certainly the character and purposes of the
revelation depended, and not upon heavenly
partiality and selection of a particular and favored
people per se to be the recipients of the divine
light, as the Hebrew writers taught. God never
hated one nation and loved another because of
race or ancestry. He is now, and ever was, the
imiversal Father. We are all, says St. Paul, the
"offspring of God," and Jew and Gentile arealike
to Him, in every land. His children and the
common objects of His love and care. Any
contrary belief is illiberal and untrue, and comes
simply from race and national prejudices, igno-
rance, and religious bigotry. In accordance with
these ideas of God are the opinions of the brightest
and broadest thinkers of the age. I cite Max
Muller and Rev. Charles D. Briggs, who both
fearlessly assert that inspiration from God was
not limited to Hebrew prophets and Christian

* St. Paul, Acts xvii, 30.

86 Evolution of Religions

apostles, but that the founders of the other
great and pure monotheistic religions of the world,
and even the great sages of Greek and Roman
literature, were alike gifted in greater or less
degree with inspiration from God/ No doubt
Herodotus, Xenophon, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
Seneca, and Antoninus Pius wrote much of their
grand teachings under divine light. No doubt
great and good men of every age and all countries
have been inspired to teach the truth, as they
were able to comprehend it, and not only in
religion but in other departments of knowledge.
Miiller says, " It shows a want of faith in God and
His inscrutable wisdom in the government of
the world if we ought to condemn all ancient
forms of faith, excepting the religion of the Jews."
Even St. Augustine, bigoted and narrow-minded
as he usually was, says, "There is no religion
which among its many errors does not contain
some real divine truths." This was written by
him about the year 400 a.d. in the memory of
the late abominations of Egyptian and Roman
idolatries. ]\Iuch in those ancient bibles of
Zoroastrians, Brahmans, Buddhists, Confucianists,
and Mohammedans, as well as of Jews and
Christians, is catholic and true in history and
ethics. In all of them excepting Brahmanism

* Miiller's "Chips from a German Workshop," p. 54.
Briggs, "The Stud3'-of the Bible, "pp. 167-537. Briggs, "The
Bible, the Church, the Reason," pp. 71, 72, 73.

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. 87

the theology is virtually the same. Some of the
teachings and stories in each, excepting the
Confucian analects, which are not primarily
religious writings, are allegorical or metaphorical,
legendary, and mythical. Perfection does not
seem to attach to, or can be predicated of, any of
the works of men, even though they be, in their
elements, inspired from heaven.

As to the supernatural stories in the sacred
books of any religion, all of them have more or
less such, excepting the Confucian, which is
purely ethical. We desire only to say that God
is the same infinite and all wise being now as ever,
and though we cannot fathom all His ways, He
enjoins us frequently in the Bible to consider and
judge of all its teachings and precepts. He says
to His people, "Come and let us reason together,"
and " Why judge ye not yourselves what is right ? "
There seems no himian reason, and we doubt if
any can be satisfactorily given, why, if ever God
permitted men to perform miracles, He should
not give them such power now. Humanly speak-
ing, there seems to be very many reasons why
now, in the present condition of the world, in the
present confusion of creeds and dogmas, the
conflicts and doubts of religious belief, in which
so many of the greatest minds of our day are
involved and blundering in darkness and doubt,
and yet all the world seeking the ultimate truth
perhaps more earnestly than ever before, and

88 Evolution of Religions

considering the billion and a half of human beings
now inhabiting the earth as compared with the
vastly smaller population of ancient times, the
Almighty would in this age be much more likely
to reveal Himself through miracles and theo-
phanies than ever before. Moreover, there seems
to be no reason why one age or people should
receive almost the entire attention and favor of
the Almighty, as claimed for Israel, to the exclu-
sion of all other ages or peoples. That He should,
as claimed by the Hebrew chronicles, in what
seems their extreme amor patrics and selfish
tribal clannishness, select four thousand years ago
one family of semi-barbarians, afterwards divided
into petty tribes, to whom through unnatural
portents and wonderful miracles to exclusively
reveal Himself and leave all the rest of mankind
for many hundreds of years in entire ignorance
of Himself, His will, and moral laws and of the
truth of a future life, which latter truth is not
even taught to His chosen people at that time,
is in the form of reason simply preposterous.

It is certainly astonishing that while perform-
ing such prodigies as we are told He did for the
exclusive benefit of the children of Israel, and
communicating to them a great code of civil,
criminal, and moral laws and knowledge of
Himself, He should, even to those highly favored
people, as above intimated, give no information
about a future life, or even an explicit declaration

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. 89

that there was such a life. This is an inexplicable
mystery if all the other facts are literally true.
In Zoroaster's religion a future Hfe is fully and
clearly revealed. Despite allegations of our Bible
commentators to the contrary, there is nothing
of future life taught in the Torah and other
Hebrew historic books, and only vaguely, if at
all, in the prophetic books. After contact with
the Persian and Babylonian religions, which
taught it, there are first found in the post-exilian
books, such as Daniel, Job, Proverbs, Psalms,
part of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and some of the later
prophets, some ambiguous references to a future
Hfe. It was, however, only when first clearly
proclaimed by Jesus Christ to the Jews, that God
made such revelations of His will, as taught in the
Christian bible. That He communicated such
revelations to teachers of other religions we as
firmly believe. Zoroaster was a more ancient
and greater prophet than Moses, and he was
greatly in advance of him in teaching the doctrine
of immortality, if Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
These be truths which cannot be gainsaid, though
ignorance and bigotry may denounce them.

As to supernatural occurrences narrated in
any bibles, ancient or modem, we are inclined
to disbelieve them. None are proven according
to any legal or recognized rules of evidence.
Those who are determined to believe them not-
withstanding, without any evidence, or with such

9© Evolution of Religions

evidence only as to satisfy themselves, have the
right so to believe, but certainly those who
require proof sufficient to convince their reason
and judgment have an equal right to disbelieve.
If miracles in our Bible are not facts, but poetic
myths, legends, and fables, then we may reasonably
assume from what is known of other religions
that stories of miracles in all sacred books are
unreliable. Many of them doubtless, as ex-
traordinary phenomena, may be explained or
accounted for upon psychological, mesmeric,
magnetic, philosophical, electric, or other natural
principles, with the incidents wonderfully colored
and exaggerated by the enchantments of time,
human ingenuity, and credulity. The miracles of
Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Islamism are as
firmly believed by the adherents of those religions
as Jews and Christians believe in theirs, and many
of them are as reasonable. But none of their
sacred books, nor can ours, maintain and prove
the claims for each, asserted by their devout and
unquestioning believers, that they are in all
things divinely inspired and inerrant. The holy
books of all religions, excepting the Confucian,
are full of extravagant legends and myths. So
in ours there are some contradictory stories, even
some ethical propositions differing on the same
subjects, some historical statements entirely im-
probable, some miracles, per se, absurd.

Nearly all the books of the Hebrew Bible and

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. 91

some of those of the New Testament are now
clearly ascertained to have been written or finally
compiled by anonymous or pseudonymous
authors. Nor are the rehgions of the Old and
New Testaments exactly siii generis. They do
not always teach the same doctrines as claimed
by Christians but denied by the Jews. By
Christians generally both scriptures are con-
sidered virtually as one revelation, having the
same credentials and teaching the same ideals
of God. And really considered as merely a
developm?nt of His wonderful economy in the
education of mankind, Christianity is merely the
evolution of Judaism, from a primarily earthly
cult into a divine religion. The Jew does not
believe in Christ, excepting as many of them now
do believe in Him as a prophet. And while
believing the historical and ethical teachings of
his Bible, the Jew long ago abandoned the cere-
monial and sacrificial worship of his fathers, as
well as many of their ancient laws and usages, as
obsolete relics of a semi-barbarous age, and even
of doubtful divine sanction when originally
promulgated. Christians generally, however, of
the orthodox sects, believe in all of the Hebrew
Scriptures as divinely given, as preparatory to,
and really the prologue of, the dispensation
ushered in by Christ. They make symbols, types,
and prophecies of the future Savior and His
mission and sacrifice of atonement, out of all the

92 Evolution of Religions

miracles, songs, poetic ecstasies, and dreams of
the prophets and bloody sacrifices of the Hebrew
worship, which the Jews do not and never did do,
properly deeming such use and investiture as
unwarranted.

And Jewish and Christian conceptions of God
are very dissimilar. If the orthodox theory,
that the New Testament teaches the doctrine of
the Trinity, is correct, then it differs most radi-
cally from the Old Testament. The God of the
Hebrews is, as the God of the Zoroastrians, Con-
fucians, Buddhists, and Moslems, absolute unity,
one God only, in all His nature, attributes, and
powers, and their scriptures cannot be even
remotely perverted to teach of a trinity. So,
if orthodoxy is correct, the religions of the two
dispensations differ vitally. Hence taught and
believing so, why should not the Jew cling with
imdying tenacity to his father's faith and his
father's God? It is the only true creed of Deity.
When the ecclesiastics of the fourth century
A.D., under monastic and semi-pagan influences,
adopted the Athanasian Creed, partly conforming
in so doing to the ancient Egyptian mysteries of
Osiris, Isis, and Horus, and the Hindoo trinity
of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shivah, many of the
Arabic Christians refused to follow the Western
Church into the adoption of such creed. Moham-
med's teaching — mainly a recasting and ming-
ling of old Hebraism with Christianity, a sort of

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. 93

amalgam — was really a revolt against the
idolatrous and heathenish tendencies of the late
alliance of pagan Romanism with a corrupt
Christian Church.

Mohammed maintained rigidly the monotheis-
tic worship of Deity, and an abhorrence of semi-
idolatrous emblems of the Savior, of the Virgin
Mary, and of saints, which had been introduced
into all the churches. To Mohammed and his
IshmaeHte followers, the trinity of God, symbol-
ized in the religion of their neighbors, the
ancient Egyptians, by the Osirian legend, and of
the Hindoos by the three mystic heads of the
God Brahma on one body, was an idolatrous
myth, a gross perversion of their early Christianity
as well as a departure from the ancient faith of
their great ancestor, Abraham. The jargon of
the Christian ecclesiastics of that day as to the
relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
in the distinctions and sophistries of Hetero-
ousian, Homoi-ousian, and Homo-ousian, the
Moslem proselytes disdained to listen to, and
followed the Prophet's banner.

The God of the Hebrews as of the Moslems
was and is only one. Nowhere in the Old
Testament we assert, even imder the orthodox
bias of the King James and other versions, with
the rendering of texts and modem headings of
chapters frequently distorted for this purpose, is
the doctrine of the trinity of God either expressly

94 Evolution of Religions

or impliedly taught. The assertion of George
Rawlinson, "that the doctrine of the Trinity, as
has been frequently shown, underiies the most
ancient portions of the Pentateuch, and is most
reasonably regarded as involved in that primitive
revelation which God vouchsafed to our first
parents in paradise, " Ms a baseless assumption and
as unreal and fragile as the Edenic fable which
he sponsors, but baseless even if that story were a
fact, for there is not the remote suggestion of the
trinity in it. Indeed, many of the arguments,
unfoimded assumptions and conclusions of Raw-
linson in another work, his "Historical Evidences
of Christianity," show him to be an imreliable
historian and a thoroughly unsound and sophisti-
cal reasoner. We will consider the "Primitive
Revelation in Paradise" more fully hereafter.

The Bible, we repeat, does not teach a trinity.
The God of orthodox Christianity is one none can
comprehend, a mystic triune Being, a fantasy
developed by priestly fanaticism and ingenuity,
out of certain obscure translations of some
passages, and interpolations of others, in the
Gospels and Epistles. The dogma has in the
past largely fettered the minds of devotees of
the Church and made them easily subject to
ecclesiastical control. The dogma literally is
"three persons in one God, equal in essence and
power, the three of the same numerical sub-

» Rawlinson's "Ancient Egypt," p. 15a.

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. 95

stance, but yet three equal hypostases or persons,
distinct but not separate." * Such is the Athana-
sian definition. This creed, the deification of
Jesus Christ, His atonement for the sins of all
men, — though but few are saved according to
orthodoxy, — by His death on the cross as a vica-
rious sacrifice, and the eternal pimishment of all
who die unbelieving in such creed, is a mere
ecclesiastical dogma, xmauthorized by any scrip-
ture old or new. The Jews do not beHeve it, nor,
as they translate the Bible, does it give any
support to such dogma. If the Christian Scrip-
tures teach it, then they are totally at variance
with the Hebrew Scriptures. But Jesus expli-
citly teaches the contrary. He said: "I can of
mine own self do nothing. I came not to do
mine own will, but the will of my Father, who hath
sent me into the world." ^ " My Father is greater
than I." ^ "Of that day and hour knoweth no
man, no, not the angels in heaven, nor the son,
but the Father only." * "Why callest thou me
good? There is none good save one, that is God." ^
These and many other similar sayings of
Jesus scattered through the Gospels are so plain
and comprehensive and teach so clearly that

» Archbishop Whately, "The Trinity."
' Book of John, v, 30.
' Book of John, xiv, 28.

* Book of Mark, xiii, 32.

* Book of Matthew, xix, 17, and Book of Luke, xviii, 19.

96 Evolution of Religions

whatever the mysterious relation of sonship or
His divine mission may have been, Jesus was not
in any sense whatever God, the Elohim or Yahveh
of the Bible, that it seems, as is said in scripture,
"Even the wayfaring man, though a fool, need
not err therein." "Hear, O Israel, the Lord
thy God is one God," ^ says Moses. Those texts
we have cited are such humble, clear, and explicit
declarations of Jesus as to His relations to His
Father, that they should be imderstood literally,
and no supernatural, mystical, or sublimated
interpretation of them is authorized. He never
once in His ministry gave any countenance to the
orthodox assumption that in those and other
similar utterances. He was speaking as a man only
and at other times as God. Nor did He ever sup-
port or countenance in any act or discourse the
orthodox delusion that His death was to be a
sacrifice through which expiation was to be made
to God, or, if He was one of the persons of the
trinity, to himself, for the sins of all the world;
such atonement only to be applicable, however,
according to the jugglery of the Westminster con-
fession of faith, to the predestined elect.

On the contrary, Jesus absolutely negatived and
repudiated such doctrine, if anywhere taught by
allegorical or mysterious expressions of the evan-
gelists, in His peerless prayer to His Father and
His subsequent declaration enforcing forgiveness

* Deuteronomy, vi, 4.

Buddhism. The Trinity, etc. 97

of sins, "For if ye forgive not men their sins,
neither w'ill your Heavenly Father forgive your
sins," thus putting divine pardon on absolutely
the same ground as human forgiveness of in-
juries. Thus effectually does Jesus dispose of
the doctrine of the atonement, without any
argument, and no amount of creeds or sophistry
can vitalize the dogma. Absolutely, " Repent
and ye shall be forgiven, as ye forgive others."
No mediator or atonement is required, none
intimated.

CHAPTER VI

CONSIDERATION OF MIRACLES

"TT is the distinction of the Bible to be the
1 sacred volume of two great religions, the Jewish
and the Christian. But while the whole, includ-
ing the Apocrypha, is sacred to the Romanist,
only the Old Testament and New are sacred to
the Protestant, only the Old is sacred to the Jew,
One could almost say that the Bible is the sacred
volume of three great religions, so largely is the
Koran based upon the Bible, or rather upon the
Talmud in the first remove and on the Bible in
the second." "The Bible is a great book, and it
has had a famous history. The science of com-
parative religion teaches nothing more decisively
than that the Bible has an immense superiority
over all the other sacred scriptures of the world.
These may have isolated sentences of equal of or
greater spiritual significance, but they have no
such average beauty and significance. Surely
such a book, with such a history as it has, and
such a fame and such intrinsic value, merits the
carefulest consideration." *

' Rev. John W. Chadwick, "The Bible of To-day," pp.
I and 2.

98

Consideration of Miracles 99

Such consideration should be given to every-
thing in its pages, history, prophecies, ethics,
and miracles. We have considered somewhat its
history. Its ethics are true. Its prophetic books
are grand. As to its miracles, does it necessarily
follow that because God may have revealed Him-
self by inspiration to good men at various periods,
as taught in this book, that the stories of angelic
visions and supernatural manifestations inter-
spersed through it are literally true and not
merely legends? Many of the divine messages
to the people of Israel were not accompanied by
any such manifestations. The most of them
indeed through the prophets were not.

Such manifestations could not affect the validity
of the revelations or the truth of divine teachings.
They could at most only tend to confirm the
authority of the promulgators. The ethics prove
themselves, and the historical facts must be
proven by evidence. The truth of miracles is not
a question of power in God. Omnipotence can
do anything. It is a question of facts. Have we
sufficient evidence of the truth of Jewish or
Christian miracles or those of any other religion ?
For all systems of religion excepting the Con-
fucian, have had their miraculous phenomena
and abundance of them, either related in their
bibles or external to them. Our Bible, Ton
Biblion, the book, or rather Ta Bihlia, the books,
as composed of many writings, is xmdoubtedly

loo Evolution of Religions

the exponent of the best reHgion of the world. It
surely, if any are, is from God, hence if its miracles
are true, then those of the other religions, or of
some of them, may be true also. But if the
miracles of our Bible are not sufficiently attested,
then those of the other religions are not likely to
be true, for they are generally of inferior character,
and are also, like ours, devoid of outside or
external historical confirmatory evidence. All
the miracles of other religions are rejected by
Christians and Jews, and only the miracles of the
Hebrew Bible are believed in by Jews.

Now, were the miracles of our Bible actual
facts, or only allegories, fables, and myths?
Mere arguments will not suffice for answer to this
question, least of all to prove the affirmative.
Inductions from assumed mysterious premises or
conclusions from ancient beliefs will not do.
We know too much of the ignorance, super-
stition, and credulity of the ancients to give
much weight to their stories of or belief in super-
natural phenomena, even if the evidence for
them relatively to ordinary human affairs, was
very strong, which in reality it never is. No
argument is needed to sustain the proposition
that vastly stronger evidence is required, if indeed
any human testimony can be sufficient, to prove
the fact of miraculous occurrences, than of ordi-
nary or even of extraordinary natural incidents.
Because miracles are wonders, — unnatural and

Consideration of Miracles loi

outside of all ordinary human experiences, —
they do not repeat themselves and are not dupli-
cated ; whilst ordinary or even uncommon human
transactions or natural events are in line of the
universal experiences of mankind. That is, we
know from experience, observation, and contem-
porary history that such occurrences or similarones
have happened or may happen in line with and
through the operation of human events or moral
and natural laws. We know, for instance, if three
men are put into a furnace of fire and kept there
a few moments, they will be cremated, because
such has been all history and experience, and is
in accordance with physical laws, and if a con-
trary result is alleged in any case, it can only be
proved by irrefragable and incontestable testi-
mony and by historical and public monuments of
such event preserved through all the ages. The
purported testimony of one man or one himdred
men could not prove such a fact, even if we knew
such testimony was honest, unless safeguarded
by the most rigid rules of evidence, by \miversal
acceptance of it in the region where it occurred,
and by permanent memorials of the fact. Other-
wise it might possibly be true, but there would
be a much greater probability of its being imtrue
and unreliable through ignorance, deception,
religious fanaticism, or superstition. We remem-
ber a story of a body of men of some country
village in the state of Ohio belonging to a fanatical

I02 Evolution of Religions

religious sect, testifying that they had driven the
devil in bodily shape out of one of their meetings
and compelled him to seek refuge in a great
caldron of boiling water, and then driven him
out of that improvised refuge, and banishing
him finally from their neighborhood by smashing
the kettle to fragments with stones and other
missiles.

How do we know that Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego were cast into the great furnace
of Nebuchadnezzar and came out -unscathed ? Or
that the Son of God walked with them in the fire ?
How did Nebuchadnezzar or any of those present
with him know the Son of God or how He
looked? Where is the evidence? Not a word
of the wonderful story in the nearly contempo-
raneous Chaldean history of Berosus, who is re-
garded as a reliable historian. No monument of
the event ever existing. Not a word from any
one who saw the miracle excepting an unknown
Daniel, and we know not that any such person
wrote the book, and the book itself has been
proven by the best biblical scholars of this
century to be a religious fiction, written imder a
pseudonym by an imknown Jewish rabbi long
after the exile, probably about the year 165 B.C.
And the exclamation of King Nebuchadnezzar,
* ' Lo, the form of the fourth man is like the Son of
God," is evidently an interpolation put into the
ancient version by some enthusiastic Christian;

Consideration of Miracles 103

for nothing was known or taught of the Son of
God in that age. And similar criticisms as to evi-
dence will apply to most of the biblical miracles.
While most of the Jews, but not all, believe those
narrated in the Old Testament, they do not, nor
ever did, believe at all in any of the miracles of
the New Testament, although they must have
been performed, if at all, in the very midst of
their ancestors, the learned scribes, Pharisees,
and Sadducees. They deny that those miracles
were ever performed. If, as we are told, we
should believe the Mosaic miracles, because per-
formed as alleged before all the people, and
transmitted down by traditions to all their
descendants, then for the same reason we should
disbelieve the evangelists' miracles, because not
believed in by the Jews then living, excepting
possibly a very few of them, nor transmitted in
teachings down through their posterity.

Really, if miracles can be proven at all, only
unassailable facts, sustained by contemporary
history and other contemporaneous evidence,
without any dissentient testimony, can establish
to honest, intelligent, and independent thinkers
their truth. The power of the Almighty is not
questioned, that is not in issue, though believers
in miracles try to make it so. God can do what
He wills. Has He exhibited miracles or per-
mitted men to perform them ? is the only question
in the issue, and that should be disposed of like

I04 Evolution of Religions

any other question of fact. And if He did four
thousand, three thousand, or two thousand years
ago, why not now? It is not presumptuous or
irreverent to ask such questions in view of the
myriads of Apocryphal miracles claimed in all
religions to have been performed, in ancient and
some even in modem times, and which all Jews
and Christians now repudiate, excepting the
Biblical miracles. God everywhere in the Bible
appeals to our reason to seek the truth and judge
for ourselves. We are never condemned therein
otherwise than for not obeying our reasons and
consciences.

Should mere statements in ancient manu-
scripts alone, some by pseudonymous and others
mostly by anonymous writers, be depended upon
as sufficient proofs of unnatural occurrences,
miracles, theophanies, or visible manifestations
of deity, appearances of angelic visitors, demons,
etc., and these performed or exhibited always in
ages of ignorance and superstition ? ^ Why, one-
half of the literature of the world up to five
hundred years ago are stories in history or
poetry, of gods and goddesses, angels, devils, and
miracles. The laws of nature, which is only
another name for the laws of God, we know, are
universal, uniform, permanent, and — the presump-
tion is almost amounting to an axiomatic truth —
are changeless. There may be new discoveries

* Dr. Briggs, "The Bible, the Church, the Reason."

Consideration of Miracles 105

of natural laws, and new applications of those
laws to varied purposes, but no changes or rever-
sals of those laws have ever been known, unless
such may have happened in those extraordinary
and miraculous cases. Miracles, if human testi-
mony can suffice to prove the violations, suspen-
sions, or reversal of those laws as alleged, then the
proofs of them should be absolutely overwhelming
and of national notoriety, corroborated by monu-
ments built at the time and by tmiversal tradition
and concurrent history, \\4thout any particles of
conflicting or dissenting testimony. The miracle
so attested, should be in every respect worthy
of divine interposition and be of superhuman
importance at the time, for its special object in
accomplishing some great work which otherwise
could not have been done, or in teaching and
perpetuating some grand divine truth which
otherwise would have been unimparted and
imknown. Tested by this last rule, many Bible
miracles must be regarded as myths or poetic
fictions. No testimony of a generally ignorant,
credulous, and superstitious people in regard to
supernatural occurrences, should have any weight
whatever. No mere tradition or old story coming
down the years of time in ancient manuscripts
can suffice to prove miracles. Omnipotent power
and infinite wisdom, we are justified in assuming,
would not be exerted to suspend natural laws for
any excepting the most momentous purposes, nor

io6 Evolution of Religions

indeed for any object whatever which the ordinary
laws of nature could provide for or accompHsh,
nor if done, without providing such overwhelming
evidence of its truth for all time as could not be
doubted.

As to stories of angels, demons, and other
messengers, good or bad, from the spirit world,
mankind anciently were so prone to believe in
such visitors and in witches and ghosts, that
there is absolutely no reliable testimony any-
where or in any religion concerning the appearance
of such beings upon earth, and even more strongly
than in the case of miracles, no one good reason
can be given why, if seen in ages past, they should
not visit the earth at the present day. Some
believe that they do, and there are occasional
stories of such visitors being seen and conversed
with in this age, but none but the intensely
ignorant and superstitious now believe such
stories. A hundred years ago, aye even two-
thirds of a century ago, in my memory, such
stories were very generally believed, and almost
every village neighborhood had its haunted
houses, its ghosts, witches, and hobgoblins.
Education, the general diffusion of knowledge,
not religion or its ministers, has swept those
chimeras away, as it will in time the belief also
in all miraculous stories. Evidence sufficient to
authenticate ordinary historical facts cannot,
therefore, for the reasons already stated, be

Consideration of Miracles 107

sufficient to prove miracles or stories of celestial
or infernal visitors.

Besides, as Muller says, "ordinary historical
facts are mere questions of time and of this life,
and are, therefore, of little relative importance, but
supernatural matters concern a future life and
eternal issues, and therefore the question of
their truth is of the last importance." Hence we
repeat that no miracle is reliable as a fact, no
matter in what book it is found or by how many
people believed, which does not carry the seal
of its truth, according to evidence or similar
conditions already indicated. Its truth should
be unquestionable to every reasonable mind
which cared to examine, and if not absolutely
convincing both as to its internal and external
fitness and proportions and concurrent testimony,
there can be no obligation whatever on the
seeker after truth to believe, much less to endeavor
to force himself to believe, as some fanatical
Christians think the doubter should do, but the
very reverse. He should indignantly repel such
imputation upon his manhood and intelligence.
We should be false and recreant to our moral
natures to believe or endeavor to force ourselves
to believe anything through childish fear or
religious or social ostracism, if we are inclined
to believe otherwise or for other reasons, without
mere calm conviction of the truth.

We know enough of God's ways to assume

io8 Evolution of Religions

that He does not go into controversies with men
to prove His works, and that if in the accom-
plishment of His divine purposes, He should
cause miracles to be performed, He would accom-
pany them with such evidence of certainty as to
be overwhelming, and exclude any other hypothe-
sis than their absolute truth. We may assume
He would not require belief in them upon the
mere naked statement of one or two or three
chronicles, and possibly pseudonymous or anony-
mous ones. He would in His own way demon-
strate their truth as all the operations of nature
are demonstrated. They would be so authenti-
cated as that none who were willing to believe
could disbelieve or doubt. Do any of our Bible
miracles come up to such reasonable require-
ments as to authenticity? By no means. Many
of those miracles are doubtless allegories or poetic
fictions designed to teach and illustrate great
truths. Such are the beautiful poems of Job
and of Jonah, which are as grand as anything in
the world. Doubtless many miracles were only
natural occurrences, connected with some memo-
rable events in Jewish history, and which were
afterwards transfigured by tradition, legend,
popular stories, and priestcraft into the super-
natural. In religion as in natural perspective
it is true "that distance lends enchantment to
the view." For instance, it has been believed by
some biblical scholars, — and the text of Exodus

Consideration of Miracles 109

justifies that belief, — that the migration of the
shepherds or Israelites from Goshen in Egypt to
Canaan passed over the north marshy arm of the
Red Sea near Suez, when a sirocco was blowing
its shallow waters southward into the deeper
gulf, and thus permitted the people, without
vehicles of any kind, to cross on comparatively
firm ground, by so doing avoiding a long detour
to the northward. National vanity, poetic license,
and priestly legend, for the wonder and gratifica-
tion of their descendants in after ages, changed the
story into the miracle of marching in coliimn
across the bottom of the deep sea, with the
waters banked up as walls on either hand.* After
the Israelites crossed over the marshy ground
the Egyptian army may have attempted to follow,
and many of them have been ingulfed with their
horses and chariots by the returning waters.
They would hardly have ventured to go down
the precipitous sides into the oozy bottom of the
deep sea, incumbered with their armor and
weapons, with horses and chariots. "And Moses
stretched out his hand over the sea; and the
Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east
wind all that night, and made the sea dry land,
and the waters were divided."

The crossing of the river Jordan was no doubt
done when its waters were, as they are often now
in dry seasons, very shallow in broad places.
• Exodus xiv, 21.

no Evolution of Religions

So doubtless many other natural events in the
history of Israel were transfigured by time,
tradition, and oriental poetic license into the
supernatural, as was the case in the ancient history
of all nations. Many miraculous stories in the
Bible were simply mythical ideas, transformed
and clothed in fiction and poetic imagery. We
agree with Rev. Charles A. Briggs where he says : *
*' There can be no doubt that recent criticisms
have considerably weakened the evidence from
miracles and predictive prophecy. To many
minds it would be easier to believe in the inspira-
tion of the Scriptures and the divinity of Jesus
Christ, if there were no such things as miracles
and predictions in the sacred Scriptures. The
older apologetics made too much of the external
marvels of miracle working, and sought to find
in history the minute details of the fulfillment of
predictions." Later Briggs continues: "If we
insist upon the fulfillment of the details of the
predictive prophecies of the Old Testament, we
shall find many of those predictions have been
reversed by history." '

One of the arguments which has always been
a strong one and elaborately urged by Paley,
Wilson, Locke, Butler, Leander, George Rawlin-
son, and many other writers both Jewish and
Christian, to maintain the truth of biblical

* Briggs, "The Bible, the Church, the Reason," p. 279.

' " The Bible, the Church, the Reason," p. 286, Appendix.

Consideration of Miracles m

miracles, is that many of those miracles, such as
the ten plagues of Egypt, the passage of the
IsraeHtes through the Red Sea and the river
Jordan, the feeding of the people for forty years
during their wanderings in the wilderness of
Northern Arabia (by the way, an absurdly small
territory, probably three hundred miles in length at
the utmost, by two hundred and fifty in breadth,
for a nation of possibly two million souls to
roam around in for so many years doing nothing,
fed by miraculous deposits of manna from the
skies and flocks of quails, alternately coming
from somewhere unknown each morning and
evening), the sun and moon standing still for a
whole day at the command of Joshua, the walls
of the city of Jericho falling of their own accord
before the beleaguering army of Israel; that all
these and many other supernatural occurrences
were witnessed by all the Hebrew people, and
that the stories of them were transmitted as
claimed in the Bible down the ages from fathers
to children through successive generations, and
thus kept in the memories of the people, as well as
by their sacrificial worship, annual feasts, etc., and
that unless such miracles had actually occurred
and such traditional and priestly records in their
sacred books been continued and preserved and
read from generation to generation, such miracles
would not have been believed in future ages, and
consequently must be true as so attested. Now,

112 Evolution of Religions

be it noted, we have only the statements in books
of Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges, that such
customs and family and priestly rehearsals of the
history and occurrences of the past were observed
as stated and so taught and transmitted to
posterity without any lapse or hiatus. But we
know from the same and other books of the Bible
that those injunctions to so perpetuate the
historic memories of the people were actually
frequently disregarded by the Israelites and that
long lapses did actually occur, many times in the
traditional worships, and repetitions of historical
and miraculous past events, during the many
and long backslidings of the people into idolatrous
worships of false gods, even down to the Baby-
lonian exile, during which periods for many years
at a time they renounced and forgot the teach-
ings of Moses and rejected Israel's God. One of
the sacred writers in the second book of Chroni-
cles states that in the reign of Josiah, King of
Judah (this was long after the other ten tribes of
Israel had been carried into captivity in Assyria),
but one manuscript copy of the Torah could be
foimd in all Jerusalem and the kingdom, even its
existence having been previously tmknown, and
that king, priests, and people were alike ignorant
of its existence and astonished at its contents.
This shows not only that there had been no read-
ing of the law in the Temple, nor discussion of its
contents in the homes of the people for generations

Consideration of Miracles 113

past, but that all the teachings of Moses and the
early prophets had been forgotten.

The Jewish Talmud states that during the
Babylonian exile the law and the prophets were
entirely lost and their contents forgotten, and
that the prophet Ezra recast and wrote them,
de novo, through divine inspiration, so that
really the argument for the truth of miracles in
continuity of tradition, ancestral instructions,
rural home teachings, consecutive worship, etc.,
historically fails. But be this as it may, in dis-
proof of arguments of Paley and his confreres,
before stated, merely casually calling attention
to the astoimding stories of innumerable miracles
said to have been witnessed and believed in by
Brahmans, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, and Moham-
medans, as well as by believers in all other reli-
gions which have ever existed, as firmly as Jews
and Christians believe in our Bible stories, we have
now in this age a most wonderful object lesson
in the Latter Day Saints or Mormon religion in
disproof of the old stereotyped arguments referred
to. The Mormons, a sect now numbering several
millions of people, mostly Americans and English,
and generally of average intelligence, yield unques-
tioning belief in the inspiration of all the fifteen
books which compose the Mormon Bible. Now
we know from the testimony of the Mormons
themselves, as well as from contemporaneous his-
tory, that their Bible with its books of histories,

114 Evolution of Religions

prophecies, and miracles, all total fictions, had
no known existence prior to its being found, as
alleged, in a hill called by them Cumorrah, in
Western New York, about 1823.

It was found, as hereinbefore stated, by one
Joseph Smith, afterwards the Mormon prophet
and leader (in pursuance of angelic visions),
engraved in an unknown language, subsequently
by him said to have been Hebrew and Egyptian,
on plates of gold. The plates fastened together
by a ring had been hidden there for many centuries
unknown to any human being. The engravings
were translated by Smith into the English
language by means of diamond spectacles found
with the plates, and with the assistance of an
angel, and the translation, as the Book of Mormon,
was afterwards published. Smith was an im-
leamed and uncultured man, but familiar with
our Bible. Now this Book of Mormon, com-
posed something after the style of our Scriptures,
had never been heard of before. It was com-
piled by Mormon, but hid away where found
by Moroni, the last of its prophets, who is said to
have lived in the fourth century a.d., somewhere
in this country. There was nothing to give the
book the slightest authority or authenticity. It
was a new revelation, mainly concerning some
Israelites who had wandered away from Palestine
and come to America over the ocean, in far distant
times, even before the exile to Babylon. The

Consideration of Miracles 115

book had simply been brought out of oblivion,
even if the story of its finding were true and not a
fiction as it was.

Where are the golden plates? The Mormons
say the angel carried them away. Yet within a
few years after the alleged finding of the book
and its subsequent publication as a revelation
from God, without a scintilla of evidence of the
truth of its contents or of the truth of its alleged
finding, this book, a naked fiction, without any
special intrinsic beauty of style, or merits, is in
this the most enlightened country of the world,
and this cultured age, with all its miracles, visions,
prophecies, and historical narratives implicitly
believed in by many thousands of people, as di-
vinely inspired. To-day it is believed in by several
millions of fairly intelligent persons, who regard
it as equally authoritative as the Holy Bible
of Jews and Christians, and probably venerate
it more, believing, however, in both Bibles and,
I may say, thoroughly orthodox in Christian
tenets. Joseph Smith is venerated by the Mor-
mons nearly as highly as Jesus Christ. The
pages of history are full of the records of many
almost forgotten and of a few surviving religions,
and of incredible beliefs in all sorts of deities and
astounding legends, but Mormonism illustrates, as
probably no other religion ever did so thoroughly,
the absolute and utter credulity and unreliabil-
ity of ordinarily intelligent human beings imder

ii6 Evolution of Religions

the influences of superstition and fanaticism, in be-
lief in any and all stories of the supernatural. Men
and women under certain conditions and environ-
ments will believe anything supernatural, espe-
cially if it comes down to them from supposed
antiquity, and Mormonism absolutely confounds
and disproves the old stereotyped and once
supposed invincible and overwhelming argimient
for the genuineness of biblical miracles on account
of the supposed belief of the Israelites in them
only through or because of ocular evidence and
ancestral teachings and rites of worship, even if
there had been a perfect continuity among their
descendants in such teachings and rites, which the
Bible history shows there was not, nor even
continuous belief, for they often utterly forgot the
God of Israel and worshiped heathen gods.

The fact is, as demonstrated by history and
imiversal experiences, that any shrewd, intelligent,
unscrupulous impostor, with thorough knowledge
of human nature, devout austerity of manners, and
enthusiasm in his work, can gather up followers
for any creed, attested by any number of miracles,
who will stand by him to the last and believe
everything he teaches, and the times and his
environments will determine whether his faith
and the number of his followers shall develop into
a great religion or not.

Consideration of Miracles 117

' Oh the lover may-
Distrust the look that steals his soul away.
The babe may cease to think that it can play
With heaven's rainbow. Alchemists may doubt
The shining gold their crucibles give out.
But faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood hugs it to the last."

CHAPTER VII

INTERNAL BIBLICAL EVIDENCE OF MIRACLES

MANY writers upon the subject of biblical
authenticity and plenary inspiration, while
admitting that the external testimony to its
historical statements and miraculous stories may
not in all respects be entirely satisfactory, yet claim
that supplemented by all the internal evidences
in the Bible itself, the truth of its plenary inspira-
tion is absolutely impregnable. Now we regret
to differ with learned scholars and theologians
embracing many distinguished names, but we
must on the contrary assert that there are many
things in the Scriptures which not only do not
per se add conviction to the external evidence
whatever that may be, but rather tend to weaken
and depreciate it, and are not in themselves in
accordance with other teachings in the Holy Word,
nor with proper conceptions of God as the omnipo-
tent, omniscient, and omnipresent Creator of the
universe and wise and merciful Father of all
mankind. We shall in this section consider
briefly some of those matters in the Bible itself
which we think disprove the theory of its plenary
divine inspiration and of its infallibility in all

ii8

Internal Evidence of Miracles 119

things, and which will sustain our contention
that while the Bible in its total summary of truth
teaches the best religion of the world and the
purest ethics, and furnishes in the Mosaic code
the best civil and criminal laws as a whole of
any nation of those ancient times, and that while
"holy men of old," as probably some of subse-
quent ages, were inspired to teach the world about
God, and of man's duties to Him and to his fellow-
men, yet that some things they taught and
recorded were only human and fallible.

The higher scholarly criticism of the past one
hundred years in biblical and .general religious
fields has conclusively shown that the Hexa-
teuch, or first six books of the Bible especially,
and probably all the other historical and most of
the prophetic and poetic books, including Psalms,
Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon,
were compilations from ancient documents,
traditions, and various other sources by imknown
authors, that the editors, redactors, or com-
pilers were not the persons whose names are
given to the books as their authors, and that the
original writers of the manuscripts from which the
compilations of the books, as we have them now,
were made, wrote from different standpoints
accordingly as they belonged to different classes of
Hebrew writers, as Jehovists, or Judaic, Elohists,
or Ephraimitic, Deuteronomist, and Priestly
schools. The idioms, language, thoughts, and

I20 Evolution of Religions

style of expression of all the sacred books, espe-
cially of the Old Testament, are very similar and
show that they were all largely edited and com-
piled from older writings into their present form
by one person or iinder his dictation. Doubtless
the prophet Ezra, as already indicated, and as we
gather from the book which bears his name, and
from the Apocryphal book of Esdras (really the
same name), and as Jewish traditions in the
Mishna and Talmud assert, assisted by his col-
league, Nehemiah, was the compiler of nearly
the entire Hebrew Bible in its present form, ex-
cepting the books of Job, Esther, Daniel, and some
of the later prophets, which were undoubtedly
written after the exile. ^ Kings, Chronicles, Jonah,
Isaiah (after fortieth chapter), Ezekiel, and
Jeremiah were written during the exile. Which
books were inspired and entitled to be put into
the "holy list" or canon, and which should be
non-canonical books, in both the Hebrew and
Christian Scriptures, was an unsettled problem
until about four himdred years after Christ, when
the present canon was finally agreed upon by
Roman ecclesiastics, after having been the subject
of intense and even bitter controversies, both
Jewish and Christian, for several centuries. As a
matter of fact, the final determination and settle-
ment of the canon embracing also all the books now
called Apocryphal by Protestants and rejected

* See Appendix, Notes B, C, and D, pp. 215-216.

Internal Evidence of Miracles 121

by them, was made by Pope Imiocent I, in 405
A.D./ and so we have the blasphemous absurd-
ity of one man, only a weak, erring man, deciding
for the whole Christian world and for all time in
that ignorant and benighted age, the question of
inspiration of biblical books, assuming, as it were,
to put the Almighty's seal of inspiration on them,
the Church meekly obeying the pontifical bull,
estabhshing the canon issued by the assumed
successor of St. Peter as head of Christendom
and vicegerent on earth of Jesus Christ. What
mockery of divine things !

Some of the Apocryphal books which the bull
of Pope Innocent admitted into the inspired
canon, such as the second book of Esther, Tobit,
Susarma, Bel and the Dragon, are simply puerile
fables, and it is astonishing that learned Jewish
rabbis and Catholic scholars would ever admit
them into the fellowship and sanctity of the other
sacred books, greatly detracting as they do by
such association from veneration for them. There
is no divine attestation, we assert, to the biblical
canon, nor is there, we believe, any such attesta-
tion claimed per se, and consequently the canon
entirely depends upon ex cathedra. Any person
is entitled to receive and believe which books of
the Bible are really inspired and canonical, and
which, if any, are not according to his convictions.
With Rev. Dr. Briggs, profoimd thinker and

* Johnson's American Encyclopedia, p. 40,

122 Evolution of Religions

biblical scholar, the many controversies about
Bible canonicity, as well as discussions of miracu-
lous -stories, seem to have had little influence, for
he considers some of the books as legendary and
some of the miracles as merely fictions, written to
explain and enforce moral truths, and, singularly
enough, bases his belief in the inspiration of
Scriptures only on such of the books as from the
sublimity and beauty of their moral teachings
and delineations of divine character, give internal
attestation of inspiration. As he broadly sums
up his theological theorem, " Upon the witness of
the Holy Spirit." Of course the attestation of
the Holy Spirit would be conclusive and final if
we could only be sure of its decisions. Dr. Briggs
does not furnish the test. This same "attesta-
tion " of the Holy Spirit would, of course a fortiori,
apply equally as well to everything beautiful,
pure, and true taught in the sacred books of
other religions as in ours. But how can we
obtain the witness of the Holy Spirit, excepting
to each individual's reason, as to miracles, ordi-
nances, and historic statements? How can we
obtain the spirit's proof and judgment otherwise?
And how know when we have it? Dr. Briggs
does not inform us. Our Bible says, " From God
cometh every good and perfect gift," and whatever
is holy, perfect, and true, is of God and hath the
attestation of His Holy Spirit. Further than
this, we see not and know not excepting as our

Internal Evidence of Miracles 123

reason convinces us. And this seems ultimately
to be Dr. Briggs' "Witness of the Holy Spirit,"
and in full accord with his liberal views of the
Bible and of other rehgions. The great German
scholar, Dr. Julius Wellhausen, says:^ "Of the
Hagiographa, or holy writings, including Psalms,
Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ruth,
Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon,
Esther, and Chronicles, by far the larger portion
is demonstrably post-exilic, and no part demon-
strably older than the exile. Daniel comes down
as far as the Maccabean wars, and Esther is per-
haps even later. Of the prophetical literature, a
very appreciable fraction is later than the fall of
the Hebrew kingdom, and the associated histori-
cal books, the earlier prophets of the Hebrew
canon, date, in the form in which we now possess
them, from a period subsequent to the death of
King Jeconiah, who must have survived the year
560 B.C., for some time. Making all allowances
for the older sources utilized, and to a larger
extent transcribed word for word, in Judges,
Samuel, and Kings, we find that apart from the
Pentateuch, the pre-exilian portion of the Old
Testament amounts in bulk to little more than
half of the entire volume. All the rest belongs to
the later period, and it includes not merely the
feeble aftergrowths of a failing vegetation, but

* Wellhausen' s "History of Israel," Introduction, p. i.

124 Evolution of Religions

also productions of the vigor and originality of
Isaiah xl to Ixvi and Psalm Ixxiii."

An able Jewish scholar, Rabbi Berkowitz, in a
sermon preached in Kansas City, Missouri, on the
Passover Sabbath, April 8, 1892, says, inter
alia, " The Jews of to-day are not the Jews of old,
nor are they responsible for the long forgotten
and obsolete dogmas which create the ire of the
followers of IngersoU ; yet we are held responsible
for them by those scoffers. Do they not know
our history? Has Judaism, even for a day, in
this age, asserted that the Old Testament was
aught but the gropings of the human mind in its
ardent and zealous efforts to learn and obtain the
truth? Has Judaism even for a day asserted
that the Old Testament was divinely written,
verbally?"

We will now take up and review some of the
Bible stories which we think militate strongly
against the theory of its plenary inspiration from
the internal point of view. We commence with
Genesis, third chapter. The authorship of that
book has generally been ascribed to Moses, but
there is no evidence whatever existing that he
wrote it. It contains intrinsic evidence that it
was originally compiled from many sources. Its
historical and traditional revelations doubtless
came largely from Assyrian, Chaldean, and Egyp-
tian fountains, and possibly much from the Zoro-
astrian Persian priests, whose religion antedated

Internal Evidence of Miracles 125

Moses by one thousand years, and whose grand
teachings had spread far and wide over Central
and Western Asia by the time of Moses. The
latter doubtless was acquainted with that re-
ligion, and learned his pure monotheism from
it. He was also, as Exodus tells us, thoroughly
versed in the learning and religion of Egypt, his
native country, which we know from history,
among its many subordinate deities, recognized
and believed in one "great supreme God of Gods."
Moses may have originally ^vritten the manu-
scripts of Genesis and Exodus, as well as the other
three books of the Pentateuch, although, as
already said, there is no evidence but tradition
that he did so, and all those books, especially
Genesis, contain intrinsic evidence that many
matters were interpolated into them in years long
after his time. He was, no doubt, the leader and
lawgiver of the shepherds of Goshen, .or Hebrews,
after their migration or expulsion from Egypt,
about 1500 B.C., a great and good man, though
Egyptian annals have no contemporary history of
him.

The first chapter of Genesis is a wonderful
story of creation and the cosmogony of the earth
and its condensation and molding out of primeval
chaos. According to modem science it details
very nearly correctly the order of the astronomi-
cal, geological, and paleontological changes and
evolutions which occurred through long eons or

126 Evolution of Religions

ages, whilst the earth was being fitted by the great
Creator, through successive preparatory stages, for
vegetable and animal life; not, of course, as
seemingly, literally stated, in six ordinary days,
but actually during a series of ages, periods of
very long and indefinite duration, as is generally
taught by all advanced biblical scholars, as well
as by all scientists of this day. In fact, only
very ignorant and fanatical Jews, Christians,
Mohammedans, and Mormons, cognate religion-
ists, now believe the story of the creation literally.
The second chapter of Genesis is evidently from
another and mythical source. The supernatural
comes in. It contains intrinsic evidence that it is
not of or in line with the original and natural
account of creation in the first chapter, but was
woven out of other legends. Woman had already
been created with man, "male and female."
God had created them, she man's predestined
and inseparable mate for time and eternity. All
of the other progenitors of the tribes of the
animal kingdom had been previously created and
all God's work in creation had been finished
according to the first chapter, and declared good
and perfect, and His day of rest, the Sabbath, had
come.

But the mythical story in the second chapter of
Genesis tells us that the creation of woman, man's
natural complement, the crown and glory of
creative energy, without whom man was nothing

Internal Evidence of Miracles 127

but a useless freak, was an afterthought of Deity,
because it was found, probably after His enlighten-
ment by observation and experience, as the story
suggests, "that it was not good for man to be
alone," and because among all animals brought
before Adam to name "there was no helpmate
found for him." And surely all the human race
must be everlastingly grateful to him, that he
rejected for a mate all of the other creatures
brought before him, if it were so. Then, accord-
ing to the legend, the finale to the great work of
creation was enacted by the Deity, when or how
long after the day of rest we are not told, creating
and fashioning Eve out of one of Adam's ribs
while he slept. When considered with reference
to all the environments of the narrative of
creation, and apart from our deeply instilled
and almost hereditary reverence for the Bible,
would we not be apt to regard this story of the
creation of Eve as a silly oriental myth ? Really
in its context and surroundings it bears its own
refutation.

We have in other religions, especially in the
Egyptian and Hindoo, fabulous histories of the
creation, but we must say in justice to Genesis
none equaling it in grandeur and simplicity, nor
any so nearly corresponding with the true geo-
logical story "of the rocks and hills." There
are various other legends about the primeval
age, in various ancient histories, and they with

128 Evolution of Religions

anthropological, paleontological, and geological
discoveries of the past century or two, rather tend
to prove that there were other progenitors of the
various races of men originally created besides
Adam and Eve, in the various continents of the
earth. But whether created in one pair or many
pairs, as the other orders of the animal kingdom
probably were, as indicated in the first chapter of
Genesis,* man and woman were undoubtedly
brought into existence at the same time in con-
sonance with nature's general plans and purposes.
The creation of either sex without the other at
the same time, is- an unreasonable theory, and
would have been out of harmony with apparent
creative designs, and is, besides, contrary to the
statement of the creation of man and woman on
the sixth day. "Male and female created He
them." ^ The method of their creation is of
little importance compared to the awful tragedy
which soon after befell them,^ the most awful
tragedy, if literally true, which ever befell the
human race, the most dire in its consequences and
the story of which demands the most careful
consideration and analysis.

Doubtless our first parents were created perfect
mentally and physically. God said they were
"very good," and we have no reason to suppose

* Genesis, ch. i, verses 20-25 inclusive.
^ Ibid., ch. i, verses 27, 28.

* Ibid., ch. iii.

Internal Evidence of Miracles 129

that they differed from their posterity in form,
mind, powers, passions, or in other respects when
first created, excepting in not possessing any
hereditary taints of diseases or depravities. They
were perfect, sinless, but Hable to sin. All their
organisms and powers were good, and we believe
are naturally good in their posterity when not
diseased and corrupted by inherited evil traits, as
most are now. God had pronounced all His
works, including Adam and Eve, to be "perfect"
and "very good." They are placed in the Gar-
den of Eden. Here we will digress awhile. Where
was this garden ? Or is the story of it merely a
myth? Its mythical existence is shown by the
story of its location. Although spoken of as lo-
cated where the "river which went out of Eden,"
and from thence was parted and became the heads
of four well-known rivers and the locality as exist-
ing when Genesis was written, which was certainly
long after the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.
no such region of the earth where the four great
rivers named, or any other four great rivers had
their origin or fountain heads from one river, has
ever been known in history or geography to exist.
The four rivers named could never have had the
same territorial origin.^ It is impossible, but

> Josephus' " Antiquities of the Jews." Book First, ch. i,
says: " Now the Garden was watered by one river which ran
round about the whole earth, and was parted into four parts."
Such was ancient geographical knowledge.

130 Evolution of Religions

myths, like the fables of the Arabian Nights, do
not regard impossibilities, they are only the more
alluring. The heads of the four rivers, Euphrates,
Pison, Gihon, and Hiddekel, supposed to be the
historic and modem Euphrates, Tigris, Ganges,
and Nile, are three thousand miles apart. The
story is an ancient legend of the same character
as the Elysian Fields and the Gardens of the
Hesperides of Greek literature, or the fabled
Island of Atlantis, in the Atlantic Ocean, of the
ancient geographers and poets, and is either the
basis of, or evolved from, similar mythical creations
in the folklore of ancient Persia, India, and Egypt.
Eden has at one period or another been
fancifully located by Jewish, Christian, and
]\Iohammedan writers, in nearly every region of
the globe. Some have located it in the tropics,
and some at one or other of the poles, which are
supposed once to have had tropical climates. The
latest theory of its location we have seen was in
an article on the subject by a prominent Christian
divine, who claims that Eden was located where
the Persian Gulf, or Sea of Oman, now rolls its
waves. The reverend dreamer admits, of course,
that every trace of the wonderful garden has been
obliterated. This last romantic theory is as
good, and probably as nearly correct, as any
other of the multitudinous disquisitions on the
subject, and besides has the merit, if believed, of
rendering entirely useless further speculation or

Internal Evidence of Miracles 131

research. An Eden submerged ages agone under
the coral groves of Oman's Sea is not easily-
investigated. But the question of Eden's location,
like the place where the mythical Noah's Ark
finally rested after its stormy voyage on the
billows of the universal Deluge, is really not a
matter of much consequence, and excepting to
illustrate the uncertainty of even what is claimed
as inspired narrative, controversy on the subject
is really unprofitable, even if interesting. We
believe it was a fabled garden. All we know of it
or can ever know is that Genesis says, "The Lord
planted a garden eastward in Eden. And a river
went out of Eden to water the garden, and from
thence it was parted and became four heads," etc.
The fanciful character of the story seems suf-
ficiently shown by the allegation of one mighty
river irrigating the garden, and after leaving its
confines, parting there and becoming reservoirs
or heads of each of the four great rivers named,
the source of one of which, the Gihon, supposed
to be the Nile of Egypt, was in a different conti-
nent, and thousands of miles apart from the
others whose sources are each also widely sepa-
rated. All ancient geographies are more or less
fabulous and very obscure, even when partly
correct, and the story shows that the geography
and topography of Eden were very illy defined in
the mind of the author of Genesis. But to
return from the digression.

132 Evolution of Religions

Adam and Eve came into possession of the
garden just from creation at God's hands, per-
fectly guileless, innocent, and pure as newborn
babes. Credulous, without any knowledge or
experience, and totally unknowing and unsus-
pecting of sin or evil, they are permitted to
eat of the fruit of every tree in the garden but
one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
and of this they are enjoined not to eat, for the
reason that if they should eat the fruit thereof
they should in that day surely die. The death
interdicted must have been natural death, but
they did eat of the fruit of that tree and did not
die. It gave to them a conscience or knowledge
of good and evil.^ Was this knowledge designed
to have been kept from them? It seems so from
the context. But what was the tree growing
there for? God in His omniscience knew that
the pair would eat the fruit. But would not this
interdicted knowledge if communicated to them
previously, have prepared them against the ser-
pent's future wiles, if the tragedy were not pre-
destined? And what was the tree of life growing
there for, if not to counteract the evil done?
They had not been forbidden to eat of its immortal
fruit. Unfortimately as it seems for the "hapless
pair and their posterity, that they did not imme-
diately after partaking of the forbidden fruit eat
also of the fruit of the tree of life, for which they

* Genesis, ch. iii, verse 22.

Internal Evidence of Miracles 133

seem to have had sufficient time before they were
debarred from the garden. Had they done so it
would seem that Hfe and immortaHty had been,
beyond mistake, fate, or peradventure, irrevocably
secured to them and all their posterity forever.

Why was God so apparently determined that
Adam and Eve should not "put forth their hand
and take also of the tree of life and eat and live
forever," thus revoking the doom incurred by eat-
ing of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil? Was the knowledge of good and evil
incompatible with immortality? Certainly not,
because it is not so now, as we are taught in the
Gospels, and was not so then, as Genesis informs
us that if our first parents had eaten of the fruit
of the tree of life they should live forever not-
withstanding their sin. Those were most wonder-
ful trees, the fruit of the one imparting conscience
or the knowledge of good and evil and resulting
death, and of the other imparting quenchless
immortal life, conqueror of death. They were
trees of no botanical order or species ever since
known on earth, and must have been the one
extinguished, after imparting its knowledge so
baleful of eternal results, and the other trans-
planted from the terrestrial to the celestial
paradise, for we are told in the Book of Revela-
tion, of the Tree of Life growing by the side of the
Crystal River in the home of God.

After being enjoined not to eat of the fruit of

134 Evolution of Religions

the tree of knowledge of good and evil, to the
astonishment of the new children of God, a great
serpent standing erect conies before Eve, and in
her speech tells her that if she will eat of the
forbidden fruit she shall not die as God had told
her and Adam they would, but on the contrary,
should become as Gods, knowing good and evil,
which they must naturally have supposed was
most desirable knowledge. In this connection
it does not perhaps matter, at least not with the
orthodox, that the Bible elsewhere says, "Thou
canst not see my face, for there shall no man see
my face and live" ^ ; "No man can see God at
any time"^ ; "Whom no man hath seen, nor
can see," ^ and yet that Adam and Eve are repre-
sented as having talked with God face to face.
Now who gave the serpent, if only a serpent,
cimning and ability to talk, or if it was Satan, the
evil one in serpent's guise, who permitted him
there? Was it not God, and did not God know
of the temptation and certain ruin Satan was
planning? Most certainly! If He is omniscient,
none can doubt it. Now is it strange that the
innocent pair, filled with curiosity and desire,
believed this wonderful serpent unlike all others
of his kind they may have seen, standing erect
and gifted with their speech? Why should they
not believe it too was a God ?

' Exodus, ch. xxxiii, verse 20.

^ John, ch. i, verse 18.

^ Timothy, ch. vi, verse 16.

Internal Evidence of Miracles 135

It seems natural that they should have so
believed and confided in its words and promises,
negativing as it did the other God's declaration
that they should die if they ate the fruit and
promising them with continued life, also the
knowledge of good and evil. They certainly
believed the serpent's words and doubted God's.
We must remember — and this should be carefully
borne in mind — that they knew not any evil yet,
nor any distinction between good and evil, nor
was there any apparent reason why they should
not believe the serpent as well as God, nor did they
know what disobedience, sin, and death were.
Having no moral sense or guide, how could they
sin or know sin? The temptation was over-
powering. Seeing that the fruit was pleasant
to the eye, and to be desired to make them wise,
and apparently good for food, in their childish
innocency, curiosity and appetite were beyond
control, and they ate the fruit from whose essence
was imparted to them their first knowledge of sin.
Was not this a most astonishing method of
imparting moral knowledge through the palate
and stomach? For so eating of that fruit, and
lest they should next pluck and eat of the more
wondrous fruit of the tree of life, standing hard
by the other tree, and so avert the late decree of
death, and thus secure and repossess the peerless
gift of endless life for themselves and their pos-
terity, we are told the hapless pair were driven

136 Evolution of Religions

out of Paradise, and cherubims armed with a
flaming sword which turned every way, were
placed at the entrance of the garden to guard the
way to the tree of Hfe.

The mystic Garden of Eden has never since
been seen by human eyes or trodden by human
feet. It would hardly seem useful to dwell so
long upon this ancient myth, were it not from
it, Christian orthodoxy, thousands of years after
the supposed occurrences of the tragedy, has
evolved the existence and quasi-divinity of Satan,
— the omnipresent and omniscient evil being, —
the gloomy doctrines of the fall and of original
sin, with all their consequences to the human
race, the tri-unity of God, and the vicarious
sacrifice and atonement of one of the supposed
persons in the Trinity, — metamorphosed Adam
and Eve — eo instanti, from happy, sinless im-
mortals into utterly lost, sinful, dying mortals,
and deduced the passing at the same time from
God, for their disobedience, of the inconceivably
awful sentence of mortal death and eternal
punishment on themselves and all their posterity
forever. The latter part of the sentence, eternal
punishment, only to be avoided for any, as
provided in the coimcils of heaven, then held,
by Jesus Christ, one of the persons in the mystic
Trinity, Son of God, really God Himself, then
engaging to come to earth four thousand years
afterwards, and to be conceived and bom of a

Internal Evidence of Miracles 137

human woman, as an incarnation of God, and
then as such to offer Himself as a sacrifice upon a
cross, as an atonement, to whom? Verily to
Himself as God, and for what ? Why, for Adam
and Eve's sin of eating the forbidden fruit, and
for the inheritance or imputation of the same
original or metaphorical sin, as personal guilt to
each of their prospective myriads of posterity, as
well as for the actual sins of themselves and all
such posterity, through all future ages, in case
they should all believe in and accept this dogma !
Or as atonement for so many of their posterity
only as might actually in all the subsequent
years of time so believe and repent of not only
their actual sins, but also of the aforesaid original
sin, although the most of such posterity might
know nothing of and have never heard of such
original sin. The efficacy of such to be, future
atonement, we are taught, extended in some
mysterious way, as well to all the good people,
the elect, who lived and died previous to the
Savior's crucifixion, as to those who lived after
such expiation, although those who lived and
died in Israel, or out of Israel, among the Gentiles,
in the long centuries which intervened before the
death of Christ, so far as we have any knowledge
now, knew nothing of this wonderful scheme of
atonement and salvation. No information of such
scheme of atonement was ever before the Savior's
life on earth, and for that matter not then, nor for

138 Evolution of Religions

a generation or more afterwards given in the
Scriptures or elsewhere. Certainly not in the
old Scriptures then existing.

We think this is a truthful presentation of the
story of the fall and of the orthodox doctrines
evolved by mediaeval Christian ecclesiastics there-
from, stripped of all the mysticisms and meta-
physics with which that school of theology has
surrounded them to befog the human mind. Of
course the "People of the Book," the Israelites,
the original authors and custodians of the Bible,
never knew or believed such doctrines. We read
nothing more of Adam and Eve in the Hebrew
Scriptures, excepting their paternity of children,
age, and death, after living for centuries. In the
New Testament epistles, however, many com-
ments written, supposedly over four thousand
years afterwards, are made upon their disobedi-
ence and its dire consequences in bringing sin
and death into the world. Jesus Himself, in all
His grand discourses, had nothing to say about
the primeval fall or the wonderful system of
atonement then supposed to have been conceived
in heaven.

Subsequently, beginning several centuries after
His death, the present system of orthodox religion
was elaborated and formulated in the Dark Ages
by monastic mysticism and fanaticism, largely
directed by Athanasius and St. Augustine, into
the amazing scheme of redemption as aforesaid,

Internal Evidence of Miracles 139

claimed to have been devised in heaven at the
time of the fall of Adam and Eve, and thence
running down through all the ages, as a corollary
to the wonderful miracles and sacrificial worship
of the Hebrews, which were mainly designed, it is
said, as typical of the sacrifice and atonement of
Jesus, and finally culminating in His death. Now,
verily, is the story of Eden anything but a myth
of the ancient Zoroastrian or Chaldean Magii,
endeavoring to account for the introduction of
sin and evil in the world originally, which was a
favorite quest of old-time philosophers? Doubt-
less an ancient Mesopotamian legend of a primi-
tive paradisaical Garden of Eden and home of
our first parents, was recast by an infusion of later
Zoroastrian tenets about evil and Satan during
the Babylonian exile, into the present Bible
version of older Hebrew writings, which, as here-
tofore stated, was redacted and compiled by the
prophets, Nehemiah and Ezra, after the return
of the bulk of the Jews to Palestine about 450 B.C.
The Hebrews previously, as may be gathered
from a study of their few pre-exilian sacred books,
evidently had no knowledge of or belief in Satan
until they mingled with the Persian and Baby-
lonian priests during their long exile. But we
will return to the Edenic story. What reason
have we to believe that our first parents ever
passed through a supernatural process of physi-
cal change of their bodies from immortal and

I40 Evolution of Relig^ions

&'

changeless, to mortality, to liability to future
disease and death? What evidences are there
in nature, anthropolog>^ paleontology, or other
sciences to prove that they were ever otherwise
physically, mentally, and morally than their pos-
terity? None whatever! Nothing but the naked
story of Eden and the fall! Is that sufficient
evidence, or is it indeed any evidence at all? It
is said that it was revealed to the writer, who-
soever he was, by Deity, and therefore must be
true. But that is a mere assumption, without
any testimony whatever, and disproved by the
internal testimony. A mere begging of the ques-
tion, and therefore proving nothing.

So incongruous and absurd is the story that if
forced to believe it and the awful doctrine of
eternal punishment deduced therefrom, or reject
the Bible, I should discard the latter, excepting
wherein historically sustained. Any religion that
teaches literally the dogma of eternal ptuiishment
is ipso facto false. The statement that Adam
and Eve were driven out of Eden after their dis-
obedience, lest they should eat of the fruit of the
tree of life and thereby live forever, indicates
that the fruits of the two trees were antagonistic,
and that, whereas the fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil resulted in depriving
Adam and Eve of bodily immortality, the eating
of the fruit of the tree of life would have restored
that boon to them, notwithstanding the previous

Internal Evidence of Miracles 141

sentence of death. In other words, it was an anti-
dote to the first fruit, if eaten, and annulled God's
decree. Can it be that God would have thus
virtually ignored His sovereignty, and left the
question of temporal death and eternal misery
on the one hand, and of endless life and happiness
on the other, to the chances of destiny as to
whether one or both fruits were eaten ? Certainly
such arbitrament does not comport with the char-
acter of the Almighty. Would their eating of
the fruit of the tree of life with the gift of physi-
cal immortaHty have also restored them to God's
favor again, and thus closed forever the yawning
abyss of hell? They seem to have had time to
eat of the fruit of the tree of life after they real-
ized their sin and before they were banished from
Paradise. If so, if they knew of such tree of
life, it seems, humanly speaking, most imfortu-
nate for them and their luckless posterity, that
they did not hasten to eat that immortal fruit, for
it seems, had they done so, — for the previous inter-
diction only appHed to their eating of the fruit of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, — then
disease, death, and hell would have been forever
unknown to mankind. But it was not, it seems,
God's will that they should do so and thus escape
such dire consequences. Indeed, according to the
inevitable logic of the story, the whole tragedy
was God's will if the story be true. But it is only
a myth. Evidently constituted physically, as

i4!i Evolution of Religions

their descendants are, death from old age and
the wearing out of the vital functions of their
bodies, if not from disease, was inherent in Adam
and Eve's natures as well as in their children's
and always was an essential condition of human
life. Doubtless our first parents were perfect in
every respect as just coming from God's hands,
but yet, possessing in perfection all ordinary
human -faculties, passions, hopes, and appetites,
as their descendants have, liable to degeneracy
from vice and evil habits.

Neither the Bible, nature, nor human anatomy
and physiology indicates that the laws of genera-
tion and heredity were ever changed. Did our
first parents live otherwise and sin other\\dse than
God knew they would when He gave them being ?
Certainly not! To assume otherwise denies His
omniscience. God knew they would succumb to
the tempter's wiles just as well when He first
placed them in the garden as He knew when
they ate the forbidden fruit. Innocent and un-
suspecting, knowing not evil from good, nor any
moral distinctions, prohibited from eating certain
fruit, by one being whom they must have supposed
greater than themselves, and solicited to do so,
by another being whom under the circum-
stances they must have supposed a Deity also
equal or nearly equal with the other, I have no
conceptions of the Almighty which would permit
me to believe that He deliberately allowed such

Internal Evidence of Miracles 143

a tragedy to occur. If true, the most momentous
that ever occurred on earth, a tragedy vastly
greater than the crucifixion of Christ, for that,
if orthodoxy be true, simply made it possible
for man to escape from some of the resultant
horrors of the fall, and only from a part of them,
the natural death of all human beings who
might ever live, being one of its inevitable results,
the other being the imdoing and eternal ruin of
the whole race, and to prevent that, making the
tragedy of the crucifixion necessa^>^ By the
fall, God's perfect sinless and immortal children,
destined to be progenitors of myriads of descend-
ants, who would inherit their natures and des-
tinies, in a day became utterly changed and
depraved, lured by an evil monster in their inno-
cency from their Godlike state to utter moral
and physical ruin, and doomed in themselves and
all their posterity, who otherwise would have been
ever holy and immortal, to earthly death and to
eternal misery. The omnipotent God knowing
all that was happening, able to prevent, and yet
not putting forth His hand of mercy to save,
merely His fiat, to save! Away it is a Mephis-
tophelian story, an imhallowed dream. But, say
the orthodoxists, — for on the story of Eden and
the fall, their entire system of doctrine depends,
and if Eden is a myth, then the Trinity, atone-
ment of Jesus Christ, and eternal piinishment, all
are myths, — Adam and Eve were free agents, and

144 Evolution of Religions

God could not interfere to save them from the
wiles of Satan, except by destroying their free
agency.

Well, let free agency be destroyed, if upon its
maintenance as a principle was involved, as
known to God, the temporal and eternal ruin of
the entire human race. But such free agency as
Adam and Eve had, was a delusion. According
to the context of the story in Genesis, it was such
free agency as exists in an infant five years old
against overmastering temptation. It was vir-
tually guileless infancy in a contest with the
embodiment of guile and treachery. The theory
and argument of free agency in such cases are
delusions. Should not God have advised and
warned them against the insidious tempter? Is
there any intimation that He did so? Would
such warning have destroyed their free agency?
Adam and Eve's disobedience was apparently no
more heinous than any ordinary violation of
God's laws by innocent children. They had, so
far as the pages of the Bible inform us, no
conception of the awful penalty liable to be in-
curred,— a penalty which must seem to any
reasonable mind, uninfluenced by religious bias,
absolutely incommensurate with the offense.
What could they know of even temporal death?
They had as yet seen no one die. Why did not
Omniscience warn them of the archtempter and
his wiles? The story of Eden cannot be one of

Internal Evidence of Miracles 145

fact, and as an allegory it is difficult to compre-
hend its purposes, excepting as designed to ac-
count for the origin of evil in the world. If a
real tragedy, humanly speaking, it would seem it
had been better, infinite mercy indeed, if the sin
could not have been prevented and the tragedy
arrested, that the sentence of death upon the
offending pair had at once been carried out, if
such awful results must have necessarily fol-
lowed their disobedience, and new immortals
created to beget posterity, and re-people a paradi-
siacal earth. If the story is not a myth or legend,
but a fact, then we can only say that it seems to
us, — and we are incapable of understanding how
it can seem otherwise to any one who has fair
reasoning powers and uses them, and is not a
slave to religious bigotry, — that either God knew
and willed the drama of the fall and its awful
results as part of His universal economy for pur-
poses beyond human ken and foreign to himian
weal, or else that His original plan in the creation
of Adam and Eve was then and there thwarted
by man, destiny, or Satan.

Neither theory, according to a proper concep-
tion of God, can be true, and hence we must
belive the story of Eden to be entirely mythical.
Indeed, it is contrary to every attribute of God
and is derogatory to the doctrine of biblical
plenary inspiration, or rather of any inspiration at
all, instead of furnishing any internal attestation

146 Evolution of Religions

to it. Really the story as a literal fact of a super-
natural occurrence has very few believers at pres-
ent among Jews or even Protestant Christians,
The most earnest and perhaps the only really
earnest believers in it in this age are Mohammed-
ans, Mormons, and Roman Catholics. It is aston-
ishing that while so many Protestant Christians
regard the story of Eden as a myth or fable,
they should nevertheless absolutely believe in the
doctrine of the Trinity, the vicarious atonement of
Christ, and eternal punishment, as Eden is the
comer stone of the orthodox temple built up on
such doctrines, and without Eden the whole
structure must fall.

While on this subject, and before dismissing it,
we desire to say that apart from their many
poetic beauties and wonderful portrayals of
paradisaical and celestial scenery and inhabitants
there does not seem to us to be anything more
absurd and horrible in the whole realm of literary
composition than Dante's "Inferno," Milton's
"Paradise Lost," and the portraitures of hell
and the judgment day in Pollock's "Course of
Time," the latter, by the way, a poem little known
now, but very popular in the early part of the
last century. Each of those poems is wholly
based upon the story of Eden, the Apocalypse of
the Book of Revelation, and of the dreadful creed
of divine vengeance, which orthodox fanaticism

Internal Evidence of Miracles 147

has manufactured out of them. We cannot con-
ceive how any sane mind and healthy soul en-
dued with proper conceptions of God and love
of fellow-men, can peruse the awful "hells" of
those poems with any feelings but horror and
disgust. Yet Dante's "Inferno" and Milton's
"Paradise Lost" are popular with many people,
and splendid editions of these poems, ornamented
generally with horrible pictures of hell, Satan, and
his devils, and the writhing and burning damned,
are produced annually and sold in great numbers
as souvenirs for birthday and holiday presents
from relatives and friends. We have read those
poems several times, only the more sadly to regret
each time such splendid talents wasted, in our
judgment, in such works and the more utterly to
condemn their horrible portrayals of infinite hate,
misnamed justice. Much harm and no good are
done by these poems. Morbid feelings in religion
are engendered and perverted conceptions of law
and justice taught. In them mercy and love are
utterly ignored, while in "Paradise Regained"
mercy is vouchsafed to those only who are saved
by the atonement of Christ and their acceptance
of the dogmas of orthodoxy. It is true that the
horrible fantasies of the world, of the damned
in these poems, with the storms of divine ven-
geance, and the waves of the ocean of eternal
flames ever pursuing them, in that world of despair

148 Evolution of Religions

once almost iiniversally believed in as real and
thiindered forth from every pulpit in Christendom,
are now only read as weird fictions by most
intelligent people. Their dreams of the "hell"
of those poems will be mingled in the not distant
future only with historic memories of that other
old orthodox institution, the Spanish Inquisition,
which with its horrible instruments of torture
was used by the Church of Rome for many cen-
turies to give himdreds of thousands of heretics a
foretaste of hell.

In not very remote future times, we predict
these poems, along with much of the once standard
theological works of Athanasius, St. Augustine,
John Calvin, Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and many
other once famous writers of that class of fanatics
on the same subject, will be relegated to anti-
quarian collections as mementoes of the old
dreadful tenets of semi-barbarian orthodoxy.
They are a blighting curse upon the human soul
and intellect, deadening the finest sympathies and
obliterating all rational sense of justice and mercy,
when the mind and soul are fully possessed of their
morbid sentiments and dwarfed and depraved
ideas of Deity. This has been illustrated in
the lives of many of the most bigoted advocates
and teachers of orthodox Christianity. Their
natures were hard and imforgiving. They seemed
to have had in them very little of the milk of

Internal Evidence of Miracles 149

human kindness. We will not specify individual
cases. They were the people who burned poor
old women as witches and who piled the fagots
around the so-called heretic martyrs of the Dark
and Middle Ages, who were really the best people
of those days.

Their doctrines naturally made them perse-
cutors of men of science and liberal-minded
Christians. Pagan Rome never murdered half as
many Christians as the Holy Church of the Dark
Ages. Who made the Stygian gulf of hell, with
its outer abode of everlasting darkness and in-
ternal flames, horrible monsters, and awful hor-
rors a world of woe for lost sinners, compared
with which the Hades of the Greek mythology
was a paradise ? Was it not the Christian's hell,
invented by the old Fathers? Dante, Milton,
Calvin, and Edwards merely illumined it. What
of mercy, what of anything but inexorable hate,
is apparent in the conception of the utmost hor-
rors and agonies made to be the portion of the
lost forever? Why was not banishment from
paradise forever alone sufficient? No darker
horrors could possibly be conceived by a human
mind and scarcely by a God. The God of those
poets and divines does not exist. The God of
the Bible truly portrayed and comprehended is
all holy and of infinite mercy and love. He pun-
ished but for the good of His children.

150 Evolution of Religions

" The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed.
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest,
And earthly power does then show likest God,
When mercy seasons justice."

— Shakespeare's " Merchant of Venice."

CHAPTER VIII

INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF MIRACLES, ETC. — con-
tinued

THERE are many other supernatural state-
ments and some historical narratives in the
Scriptures which do not of themselves carry
internal evidences of authenticity, but rather
tend to imbelief. Some of the miracles are of a
low order of supematurals, entirely deficient in
character and in all qualities and surroundings
which should go towards constituting internal
evidence of their genuineness, not to mention the
entire absence of any historical or other proper
testimony in their favor. The grand ethics of
the Bible standing alone would be more convinc-
ing of their divine inspiration without the mir-
acles. The power, beauty, and truth of the
inspired teachings do not depend at all upon the
legendary miracles, and the ethics are not neces-
sarily connected with them. Nor, on the other
hand, should the inspired teachings be impaired
in authority by historical inaccuracies or weak
and trivial miraculous legends.

Some miracles, such as the burning of the un-
consumed bush in the desert of Midian, out of

151

152 Evolution of Religions

the midst of which God spoke to Moses, the ten
plagues of Egypt, the passages of the Red Sea
and of the river Jordan by the IsraeHtes, the
cloud behind them in their marches by day and
the pillar of fire by night, which are said to have
followed them during their forty years' wander-
ings in the deserts of Arabia, the story of Shad-
rach, Meshach, and Abednego walking with the
Son of God in Nebuchadnezzar's sevenfold
heated furnace; of the mysterious handwriting,
his own and his empire's doom on the walls of
his banqueting hall during Belshazzar's baccha-
nalian feast ; of the raising from death of Lazarus
and of Jarius' daughter, and the resurrection and
ascension of Jesus, these and many other occur-
rences narrated in the Bible are grand and won-
derful miracles, if not myths and legendary
stories, and we might well suppose appropriate
manifestations of omnipotent power, and from
their character might furnish internal support to
general biblical authenticity and inspiration.
The Edenic drama, however, the story of Moses'
and the Egyptian magicians' rods turning into
serpents when thrown down before King Pharaoh ;
and Moses' serpents, then swallowing the others ;
the story of Balaam and the ass, of the sun and
moon standing still for a whole day at the com-
mand of Joshua, of Samson and the three hund-
red foxes, of Saul and the witch of Endor, and
other supematurals which might be referred to,

Internal Evidence of Miracles 153

do not from their character add any strength
whatever to bibhcal authenticity, but being pub-
lished and held as equally true among believers
with all other miraculous narratives, tend strongly
to impair the credibility of all.

It is idle, as Renan in his "Life of Christ"
justly says, "to claim in view of such incredible
Bible stories, and of the vast multitude of other
legendary and fabulous stories which aboimd in
books of our o^^T^ and of other religions, and
which equally with the Hebrew and Christian
miracles have been implicitly believed in for ages
by myriads of people of all religions, that evi-
dence suflficient to sustain ordinary historical facts
should be considered sufficient to prove miracles."
Some ordinary historic statements are believed
merely upon the statements of reliable histori-
ans, ancient and modem, but miracles cannot
be proved in such way. We believe in the divine
inspiration of all the messages of holiness, mercy,
and humanity, which are found in our Bible, as
well as in the bibles of all religions, and we be-
lieve so upon the authority of our Bible, which
says that "from God cometh every good and
perfect gift."

Such teachings, like axioms in geometry, prove
themselves to be from deity, but supernatural
reversions, changes, suspensions, or abrogations
of the divine laws of nature, which constitute
miracles, cannot prove themselves. They must

154 Evolution of Religions

be proven as all other historical facts. Apart
from the stories themselves, as they are found in
our Bible and in the sacred books of other re-
ligions, there is virtually no proof of miracles
existing. Bible histories, like other reliable an-
cient histories, are sufficiently trustworthy to
authenticate of themselves many natural histori-
cal facts, but they cannot alone give credence
to supernatural narratives.

Josephus, in his books of Jewish antiquities,
merely follows Bible history down to the return
of the exiles from Babylon and the rebuilding of
the second temple, and his stories of miraculous
events are merely copied from the Bible, with
some variations from our present versions, prob-
ably owing to interpolations, differences in
translations, etc. So Herodotus, the Greek,
Manetho, the Egyptian, Berosus, the Chaldean,
and other pagan historians who wrote anything
of the Israelites, only repeated what they obtained
from traditions or from ancient Hebrew w^ritings.
Really there exists no corroboration whatever of
any biblical miracles in any histories of Egyp-
tians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, or
any other surrounding nations, and very slight
corroborations of even ancient Hebrew secular
history. Such as there is, and it is generally un-
important, has been found in Egyptian pyra-
mids, temples, and mummy sarcophagi, of kings,
and in the debris of ruins of Nineveh, Asshur,

Internal Evidence of Miracles 155

and Babylon. So that, we may say, that of
historical or monumental corroborations of bib-
lical miracles, there are none whatever either
Jewish or Gentile. The alleged corroborations,
contemporary or otherwise, of any miracles of
other religions, and of the innumerable Christian
miracles of saints and martyrs of the dark and
mediaeval ages, are entirely imreliable and worth-
less, and so regarded by all good scholars and
trustworthy historians, whatever may be their
religious beliefs. We shall now, in addition to
previous comments herein, refer to some of the
Bible miracles which we consider as Apocryphal
and mythical or legendary, as also to some mat-
ters of merely secular Bible history, insufficiently
authenticated. Generally Bible history, until it
runs back into the very early years of time, is
reliable. As this is not in any sense a Bible his-
tory or commentary, but only a consideration of
its most important matters of miracles and doc-
trines, the things we shall review, instead of being
taken up consecutively, are found here and there
in the Scriptures, and are used as they seem most
appropriate for our purposes.

There are inconsistencies in the Bible. Why
should God, in whom there is no "inconsistency,
variableness, or shadow of turning," harden
Pharaoh's heart, as we are told He did against
the terrible w^amings of the great plagues, and
then pimish him and his people for not letting

156 Evolution of Religions

the Israelites go out of Egypt? According to
Exodus, God induced Pharaoh not to let them
go. Is not this charging God with duplicity?
We know it cannot be. God cannot do so. Nor
could He have sent one of His angels to go
and put a lying spirit in the mouth of Ahab's
prophets/ so as to entice him to go to battle with
the Syrians at Ramoth Gilead, that his army
'might be defeated and himself killed.

Did the Heavenly Father literally order the
extermination of the petty tribes of the Canaan-
ites, men, women, and little children, with the
besom of destruction in their ancient homes
surrounded with the vines and fig-trees which
they had planted, merely that the ruthless in-
vaders might appropriate them to their own use?
So Moses, or whoever wrote the Pentateuch,
teaches! And so Joshua teaches! What harm
or wrong had they done their despoilers and
murderers? None whatever. But it is said
they were idolaters and God wanted them
destroyed. Perhaps so. But their innocent
children might have been saved and brought up
differently. And their conquerors were also
most of the time idolaters, especially after the
conquest of Canaan, notwithstanding the teach-
ings of Moses and the divine laws. Doubtless,
as the history tells, the most of the Canaanites
were exterminated, but we opine only under the

* Second Chronicles, ch. xviii, verse 20.

Internal Evidence of Miracles 157

same old warrant of ambition, greed, and lust of
conquest, under which Cambyses, Alexander,
Cassar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Timour, Cortez,
Pizarro, Napoleon, and other conquerors deluged
the earth in blood. The Mosaic laws, civil and
criminal, compose a code of laws, wonderful and
advanced in humanity for that early age.

It forms the basis of the laws of most civilized
nations, and so far as its subject matters extend,
was mostly good. Yet, though Moses proclaimed
all those laws, without exception, as coming
directly from God, there arc in that code, judged
by the standard of true morals and the Decalogue,
some monstrous wrongs permitted, especially in
reference to slavery, polygamy, divorces, and
social morals. Slavery was allowed, and slaves
were permitted to be captured in war and
bought and sold, not only of foreign peoples,
but also of their o^vn kinsmen, Israelites. Men
were permitted to have plural wives without any
limit as to numbers, and they were also authorized
to put away and divorce their wives at pleasure,
no matter how many children they may have
borne them or how old they were. Did God
really authorize such social wrongs? It is hard
to believe it. We cannot believe it.

The Bible in that is untrue when it says He did.
Jesus did not believe it, for He said that Moses,
not God, on account of the hardness of the hearts
of the Israelites permitted divorces for any

158 Evolution of Religions

cause, but that from the beginning it was not so,
tacitly thus declaring that although such was the
Mosaic law, it was not the law given by God;
thus Himself discrediting Scripture. The Savior
made no special condemnation of slavery and
polygamy, possibly because those crimes were not
brought to His attention. It is folly to teach
that God sanctioned or gave such immoral and
unjust laws, and if He did not, then so much of
Scriptures is untrue, and plenary inspiration is at
once discredited. "The greater part of the legis-
lation of the Mosaic code was superseded once for
all by Jesus." * And yet Jesus is reported as saying :
" Think not that I am come to destroy the law or
the prophets. I am come not to destroy, but to
fulfill. For verily, I say unto you, till heaven
and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in
no wise pass away from the law, till all things be
fulfilled."^

Evidently Jesus' language was not correctly
reported by the evangelists, or else by the "law
and the prophets and all things," He merely meant
only the moral law. He did not mean the sac-
rificial and ceremonial laws, for He paid little
attention to them, and they passed away forever
when the last temple was destroyed, and no
descendant of David was then sitting upon

» Dr. Briggs, "The Bible, the Church, the Reason," p.
289. Appendix.

* Matthew, oh. v, verses 17-18.

Internal Evidence of Miracles 159

Judah's throne. Nor did He mean the predictions
of the prophets, for many of them have been
imfulfilled. "If we insist upon the fulfillment
of the details of the predictive prophecy of the
Old Testament, many of those predictions have
been reversed by history." ^

Was it the God whom we worship, or was it
only Israel's God, who said "that if a man smite
his serv^ant or his ser^'ing maid with a rod, and he
die under his hand, he shall be punished. Not-
withstanding, if he live a day or two, he shall not
be punished because the slave was his property" ? ^
Perhaps, moreover, the poor mangled slave may
not have been a stranger of other race or color,
but a kinsman Hebrew! Did God really, as
Moses says He did, command, that if a man
seduced a bondmaiden who was betrothed to
another man, the maiden should be flogged for
her sin, but because she was a slave, the vile
seducer could make a petty sacrifice at a trifling
cost, and go unpunished?' Surely not the God
we worship ! We will not believe that He gave
such a law. No such immoral and barbarous
law can be found in the Confucian Analects, the
Zend Avesta, the Vedas, the Tri Pitakas, or the
Koran.

* Dr. Briggs, "The Bible, the Church, the Reason," p.
286. Appendix.

' Exodus, ch. xxi, verse 21.

' Leviticus, ch. xix, verses 20, 21, 22.

i6o Evolution of Religions

The statement in the Bible that such laws
were proclaimed by God through Moses, is ipso
facto proof that the statement is iintrue, and
that so much of the text, at least, is anything but
inspired. And the immoral inference from such
law, publicly annoimced as it purports to have
been, is logically that had not the slave maiden
been betrothed, the sexual intercourse with her
as a slave would not have been wrong, or at least
have merited or received no pimishment for either
one. Did God order through Moses, as we are
told He did, specifically, all the petty details
of the minutiae of the Hebrew sacrificial worship,
of the garments of the priests, of the ribbons,
fringes, and other ornaments of the curtains of
the Shekinah, of the rings, bolts, and nails
therefor, and of the trifling arrangements for
slaughter and sacrifices of bulls, heifers, sheep,
goats, pigeons, and doves? Truly the Lord was
concerning Himself de minimis. Sacrifices to be
made, in order, as proclaimed, that through
the reeking blood and the hot flames from the
burning flesh of the victims on the sacrificial
altar, an atonement or expiation for the sins of
the people might be made by propitiating God
through the "sweet savor," arising from the
sacrificial offerings ! What an occupation for the
God of the universe to be engaged in ! What be-
sotted worship ! A worship probably suited to the
human conceptions of a deity who would devise it.

Internal Evidence of Miracles i6i

Does anybody, Jew or Gentile, unless infatuated
with the old forms and beliefs, and supinely
following them, now believe that God ever
ordained such sacrifices, or that such sacrifices
now or ever could in God's economy, really atone
for sins? Or that such bloody, bestial offerings
were types of the Savior's future crucifixion, as
orthodoxy teaches? Or were indeed types of
anything but of the superstition, ignorance, and
barbarism of the priests, and the people who
performed such rites of worship ? The idea of the
Almighty who "sitteth upon the circle of the
imiverse and ruleth over all" enjoying, and being
appeased, or being influenced in any way by a
"sweet savor," arising not from the delicious
fragrance of odorous flowers or of burning incense,
which supposedly might be agreeable to Him, but
from the fumes of reeking blood and burning
flesh of the poor animals slaughtered for sacrifices !
The thought is disgusting! All refined and
humane minds, one would think, would instinc-
tively revolt from such an association of repulsive
ideas. A great many thousands of beasts and
birds were often slaughtered in the grounds of the
Temple at Jerusalem in one day, at the time of
the Feast of Tabernacles, and other great occasions,
and the grounds of the Temple were turned into
market places for buying and selling the animals,
as well as into shambles for wholesale slaughter.
Is it conceivable that God would suspend or

i62 Evolution of Religions

revoke nature's eternal laws and work miracles,
sometimes on very ordinary occasions, as we are
taught, for the especial benefit and encourage-
ment in their folly, of the ignorant and besotted
semi-barbarians who could enjoy such mummeries,
and call them worship of God ? Rather, methinks.
He might have worked miracles to enlighten
their minds and win them from such sacrificial
abominations.

We are often told by divines who gloss over
such things in the Bible, in their sermons and
writings, that " a glory gilds all the sacred pages,"
but such instances as above referred to, of im-
just laws, stupid miracles, and heathenish wor-
ship, as well as many other blemishes which
might be noted, sadly darken many pages of the
Bible. In fact, few of the biblical books except-
ing the Proverbs, inspired Psalms, the Prophe-
cies, and some of the Epistles are free from
blemishes. Some of the prophetic teachings, it
is true, represent God with human infirmities and
passions, but that is merely adapting their teach-
ings to the capacities of their hearers or readers.
The vulgar opening of Hosea's book, with his
"wife of whoredoms and children of whore-
doms," is not very attractive. Many Christian
ministers and Jewish priests, nay most of them,
are not honest with their people, and do not ex-
pound to them the whole truth, but conceal or
gloss over or give some sublimated or mystical

Internal Evidence of Miracles 163

exposition to all the dark features of old Bible
story.

Better the sale for gold, of indulgences and
forgiveness and absolution for sins, carried on by
the priests of Rome in the Dark Ages, than the
debasing Mosaic sacrifices. Were they indeed
anything more than the systems of worship of
the surrounding pagan nations adopted by the
Israelites and ingrafted by them upon the Zo-
roastrian worship of one God instead of the
heathen worship of many gods ? And really only
as it taught monotheism, and naturally, there-
fore, leading to higher ideals, running through
the whole system, and better laws, civil, criminal,
and ecclesiastical, was Mosaic sacrificial worship
much superior to the Egyptian, Assyrian, or Gre-
cian forms of worship, as it was inferior to the
Zoroastrian worship of Central Asia, which had
no sacrificial mummeries, though that religion
was perhaps one thousand years older than the
Mosaic. It was the oldest and original mono-
theism of earth, so far as we know. No! Such
absurd sacrificial worship never came from God,
only as all things of earth may be parts or seg-
ments of the circle of His providence and econo-
mies, of the social and religious evolutions which
He permits and guides.

The statement that the clothes and shoes of
the Israelites in their forty years' wanderings in
the Arabian deserts never grew old or worn out,

i64 Evolution of Religions

and the story of Balaam and the ass are only on
a par with many of the Oriental fables in the
"Arabian Nights." How they ever got into the
Pentateuch is a mystery. And how they can
now be believed by intelligent Jews, Christians,
and Mohammedans is a still greater mystery.
Must we believe merely because it is in the pages
of Exodus, not only that the sandals and clothes
of the grown persons never got frayed or torn
during the forty years of their wanderings, but
also that new clothes grew or were furnished by
angel hands, as children were born, and that
their clothes continued growing and expanding
on their bodies as they grew up to maturity? A
whole generation, we are told, passed away and
another grew up in the mountains, vales, and
deserts during those forty years. What non-
sense will not and have not mankind believed
under the teachings of priestcraft and the in-
fluences of religious delusions ! It must require an
amazing amount of credulity to believe such
things without a tittle of evidence, excepting that
" it is so written," or to believe as a literal fact the
poetic fable or allegory that the "sun stood still
upon Gibeon and the moon in the vale of Aijalon
and hastened not to go down for a whole day" at
the command of Joshua, in order that one petty
nation of semibarbarians might have sufficient
light to exterminate another. Where is to be
found, or can be produced by those who believe it

Internal Evidence of Miracles 165

as a real fact, any corroborating historical and
astronomical testimony of such an amazing event
as there needs must have been, at least in astro-
nomical reckonings, if true ? There is not on earth
a scintilla of such evidence. Josephus corrobo-
rated it, but his statement, like his corroboration
of other Bible miracles, comes from the original
story in Joshua, and hence is but a repetition of
it. But really the environment and language of
the story show it to be merely an extravagant
poetic embellishment or legend. How did the
Danite Hercules, Samson, manage by himself to
collect three hundred foxes and tie together and
set fire to the tails of so many, and thus sending
them loose, bum up the grain and vineyards of the
Philistines ? * Had the writer of the story been
reading the exploits of the fabled Grecian Her-
cules? ^lust we perforce also believe the story
of the fountain of water, to slake his thirst gush-
ing out of the jaw bone of an ass with which he
had slain one thousand Philistines? That jaw
bone must have been made of steel, or else in the
slaughter of so many armed enemies it would
have been early crushed into fragments. And
whence came the water supply of the foimtain, as
it had no connection with the earth? A much
prettier finale for the story of the exhausting work
of the slaughter of one thousand Philistines had
been the miraculous gushing of a spring by the

* Judges, chap, xv, verses 4 and 5.

i66 Evolution of Religions

wayside to slake the thirst of the tired Danite
champion.

Samson was the Hebrew Hercules. All ancient
peoples had their heroes who performed miracu-
lous prodigies of bravery, strength, and agility,
and were made demigods. We need but to
refer without special comment to the stories of the
resurrection of the dead man in Second Kings, ^
when his corpse was let down into the tomb of the
prophet Elisha and came in contact with his
bones; of the witch of Endor, and Saul, king of
Israel, holding converse with the ghost of the
dead prophet, Samuel, whom she had called up
and away from his distant tomb into that lone
forest at the bidding of Saul. Would God so use
a proscribed witch, all of which sisterhood He had
ordered Saul to destroy for their sorceries? Of
the lost ax rising from the bottom of a river and
floating on top of the stream at the behest of the
prophet Elisha, thus annulling or suspending for a
time the universal law of gravitation for so trifling
a matter as the recovery of the ax which had
slipped from its helve into the river ? As miracles
these instances are now "back numbers," if we
may so express the changed beliefs of most men.
These are one and all, evidently with many other
miracles we might refer to, myths, fables, or ex-
travagant poetic fictions, and originally so written,
without a particle of corroborating evidence, as

^ Second Kings, chap, xiii, verse 21.

Internal Evidence of Miracles 167

facts, externally or internally, from the character
of the miracles.

The internal attestation from the nature of the
miraculous environments is unfavorable to them.
Only the very ignorant, very credulous, and
bigoted, believe such stories any more. Those
cited, and many other Bible legends which might
be referred to, can add no conviction, inter se, as to
the general authenticity of miracles, or even of
biblical inspiration, but rather tend to impair
belief in both. No Bible miracles have any cor-
roborating historical support whatever. The
story of Jonah and the whale, and of the miracu-
lous vine which grew up over him in a day to
shelter him from the sun, is all certainly an alle-
gorical fiction and not a story of supernatural
facts, written perhaps by some gifted and liberal
Jew during the exile, or afterwards, to illustrate
the national selfishness, exclusiveness, and illiber-
ality of his race, and teaching beautifully the doc-
trine of the \iniversal fatherhood of God, His love
for all men, and merciful readiness to forgive all
who genuinely repent of sins. No atonement even
intimated. It is to our conception one of the
most beautiful of ancient poems, for poem it is,
and should be rendered into meter, illustrating in
most forcible language the same grand truths as
the " Gentle Portia" in the "Merchant of Venice"
teaches the cruel, selfish, bigoted, and avaricious
Shylock. We think it clearly shows on its face

i68 Evolution of Religions

that it was written allegorically to enunciate and
impress upon all men, and especially all Jews,
those great moral and social truths, and not merely
as a literal supernatural story, though for ages the
story of Jonah's whale and gourd have been be-
lieved and defended by Christians, though not very
strongly by Jews, as genuinely miraculous.

When we come to the consideration of New
Testament miracles, we find that none of them,
outside of the Gospels and Acts, have any corro-
borating contemporary evidence or historical sup-
port. No references are made to them in the
various Epistles. The omission is extraordinary
and goes to show that the Gospels and Acts, as we
now have them, were later productions. Some of
them are of such importance and character as,
considered with reference only as to character and
surroimdings, might give internal support to the
theory of inspiration of these teachings. But
some of them by their intrinsic character and en-
vironments, we think, have a contrary influence.
Of this latter class of supernatural stories, — and
there are many such, — let us consider as first and
most important the story of the temptation in
Matthew ^ and Luke. It is only found in those
two Gospels.

* Matthew, chap, xvi; Luke, chap. iv.

CHAPTER IX

THE STORY OF JESUS* TEMPTATION

IN order to comprehend the story clearly in all
its bearings, one should have a fixed opinion
of or belief in Jesus Christ, as to His nature and
individuality.

First. Was He God, the second person of three
persons in the Trinity of Godhead, divine, un-
created, the three persons in one being, distinct
but not separate? If so, then, though incompre-
hensibly and mysteriously conceived by and bom
of Mary, the Jewess, we affirm He was only the
semblance of man and was to all intents and pur-
poses Almighty God.

Second. Was Jesus so bom merely an incarna-
tion or manifestation of God in human form? If
so, He was to all intents and purposes God and not
man. His himianity and deity were one and in-
separable, while such existence and manifestation
continued. He was only God and not man in any
sense during such incarnation, and the mystic con-
ception of the Divine Trinity is only a human
fantasy.

Third. If not God only, in the incomprehen-
sible Trinity, or God incarnated for a time in hu-

169

170 Evolution of Religions

manity, then Jesus, whether bom from theo-
phanic conception of His mother, or really as the
son of Joseph and Mary, was only a human being.
In either case, and especially if bom of theophanic
conception. He was as God willed. His Son, and in
the latter case divinely human with God — like
faculties and possibilities, but only human still,
and never God, but only man.

These are the only three conceivable characters
Jesus Christ in humanity could bear, or in which
rationally we can comprehend Him. Of course
we cannot comprehend Him in the Trinity, but we
can know, however mysterious the relations, that
as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, not as inter-
changeable characters, for if interchangeable,
then there is no Trinity, that He was and must al-
ways be only God. God cannot cease to exist or
divest Himself of deity, and hence if Jesus were
God He was inseparably so. If Jesus was God
manifested in human form and flesh. He was
only God, and there is nor can be no Trinity of
persons in such relation. As a human being,
however, conceived and bom, though possibly en-
dowed with almost Godlike powers and capacities,
Jesus could only be a human being. These three
propositions, we think, are Irrefutable and cannot
be controverted successfully. Now if Jesus were
God, as Trinitarians claim, He could not at one
time be God, and at another time only man, or
partly God and partly man. If divinity ceased in

The Story of Jesus' Temptation 171

Him, or left Him at any time, He could only be
man, though he might be all His life preeminently
the Son of God, and gifted, as I believe He was
more than any other mortal, with God's spirit and
presence. But we state it as an axiomatic truth
that God is and always must be God, whether in a
Trinity or alone, or in any incarnation, in any
form of being.

God could not die on the cross, and when Jesus
died there. He died as a man. If God were merely
manifested in Jesus as His Son, in any sense,
though not incarnated, the Father would be yet
absolutely and imchangeably God, and Jesus
would not be God. But as God and the logical
consequences of the orthodox creed must be ac-
cepted in all their bearings, Jesus must always
have been divine, and could not — it would be in-
conceivable that He could — divest Himself of any
attributes of deity. Hence how could Jesus as
God put Himself into Satan's hands, or in his
power, to be tempted of him and to be subject to
his diablerie for forty days? As God, what could
it amount to if He did? What example to man,
or what good could be subserved? Why do the
evangelists Mark and John omit to say anything
about Jesus' temptation? It was a matter of
transcendent importance, if literally true, and
most of the really important events in Jesus' life
were recorded by each evangelist. If Jesus were
only human (and there could be no temptation, nor

172 Evolution of Religions

could it avail anything if he were not merely hu-
man), how could Satan take Him up into a high
mountain and show Him, excepting in a meta-
phorical sense, all the kingdoms of the world?
There were no mountains in Palestine of sufficient
height from which a radius of more than fifty
miles of the surroimding country could be seen,
and only so much of the then Herodian Kingdom
of Judea could Jesus probably see, and He could
see but a part of that one of the kingdoms of the
earth, and that but a small and obscure kingdom !
As God, Jesus saw and knew all kingdoms and
empires, for all were His, and His vision extended
not only throughout the earth but throughout all
the universe.

No matter what the mysteries of His being, as
the one or triune God, Jesus was only God, or else
only man. Was the one God, or the triune God
in one, or only one man being tempted? What
temptation ind ed would it be to offer God, or the
divine Son of Him who created and owned the
imiverse, who was King of kings and Lord of
lords, the dominions and kingdoms of this world,
when Satan who made the offer was merely a sub-
ject and servant of God and had nothing, except-
ing what he might hold by sufferance, to give?
Furthermore, if not too ludicrous a matter to dis-
cuss, is it conceivable that Jesus as God, or as the
Divine Son of God, permitted the devil, God's
arch enemy, to carry Him up to the dizzy pinnacle

The Story of Jesus' Temptation 173

of the Temple at Jerusalem, and after placing
Him in that ridiculous position, next tempt Him
— that is, not merely ask Jesus, but as temptation
is defined, ''solicit, induce, allure Him, get Him to
weigh and consider the inducement," for a petty
display of Jesus' power — to cast Himself headlong
down to the marble pavement of the holy court
below? What for? CiU bono? Why, to sup-
posedly gratify Jesus' vanity by such a display of
His power, really in his acquiescence, to make
Himself a serv^ant of Satan.

Was the evil one thus trying to dethrone God ?
For such, according to orthodoxy, must have
been the result of the success of his temptations.
Doubtless, of course, if the temptation was a real
incident, Satan sought to baffle God and allure
Jesus from His service. This purpose of Satan
the story clearly shows. Is it conceivable he
could have hoped to do so if Jesus were one of the
persons of the Trinity ? — and the context clearly
shows Satan knew Jesus' character and relation to
God, and that that character was son, minister,
and messenger of God, as man. We are told else-
where in the apostolic writings that the object or
purpose of Christ's part in submitting to the temp-
tation was to make it an example to His followers,
in that He was tempted in all things like as they
would be, and that His example would give them
strength to resist temptation as He did. Now as
God, or as one of the persons in the Trinity in the

174 Evolution of Religions

temptation, there could be no force or merit in
the example of Jesus to mortals at all. It would
simply be comparing the omnipotence of Deity
with the feebleness of human childhood. And if
Jesus were human or quasi-human, with divine
qualities and gifts, in either case the argument
from example would still not be apropos, be-
cause Jesus was, as Christians all believe, in His
native powers and resources, if not really divine,
yet imdoubtedly the greatest, noblest, and best of
mankind, strong and self-possessed, panoplied in
love and supreme trust in God, and so immensely
greater and better than His fellow-men in every
respect, that consequently there could be no
benefit of example in a tragedy where there was
almost infinite goodness and power to resist temp-
tation in the exemplar, and mere human ability,
with good and evil always contending for the
mastery., in doubtful struggle in the frail creatures
for whom the example was given. And if only as
an example, who initiated the temptation, Jesus
or Satan? Did Satan initiate it for such ex-
ample? Then was he indeed seeking to do good?
In fact, when the Apostles represent Jesus as
merely an exemplar in the satanic temptation,
they virtually deny His divinity and the basic
principles of orthodoxy.

Really, the story of the temptation is not sui
generis with all the rest of Jesus' life and teach-
ings. It is simply a legend of early Christianity ; a

The Story of Jesus' Temptation 175

product of the amazing superstition and fanaticism
of the times, and so put into the two Synoptic
Gospels. It should be eliminated from them
even as an allegory, because, according to the
tenets of orthodoxy, if Jesus was really God, it
borders on the profane and sacrilegious. If He
was only a man, it has features in it which are im-
possible and ridiculous. The story should be rele-
gated to works like Rev. Bernard Peck's Apocry-
phal Life of Jesus, before-mentioned, as one of that
wonderful compilation of early Christian super-
stitions and fables believed in as true by many
Christians for centuries during the early and Dark
Ages, but now only exciting our wonder and curi-
osity as mementos of the astonishing and al-
most inconceivable superstition and credulity of
ancient times. Jesus Himself discredited the
story by never once alluding to the " Great Temp-
tation" in all His ministry and discourses. Like
the visions in the Book of Revelation attributed
to the apostle John, but which were not admitted
into the New Testament canon as inspired for
several centuries after they were written and in
common use, practically the "Great Temptation
and Revelations" are now largely regarded as alle-
gories or religious fictions, and are now believed in
by few intelligent thinking people as realities.
Mark nor John do not in their Gospels even allude
to the story of the temptation. Why their
silence in passing unnoted such an important

176 Evolution of Religions

event in the life of Jesus, if true? What good
ever grew out of the legend ? As a sort of compan-
ion piece to the story of Eden and the fall, it
whetted and gratified the fancy of the Dark Ages
for wonderful mysteries and incomprehensible
creeds, and furnished the bigots Athanasius and
Augustine a basis for their dogmas. But instead
of affording any internal attestation, cumulative
or isolated, to gospel authenticity or inspiration,
when critically examined it is evidently a wholly
absurd and irrational myth and tends to discredit
all supernatural stories.

The late Bible Revision Committee in making
up the Revised Version would have been fully jus-
tified, and performed a great service to liberal
Christianity, by expurgating the story of the temp-
tations from the two Gospels as an interpolation
or fanatical legend. Neither internally nor ex-
ternally is there a scintilla of reason or evidence
to support it as a fact. It is derogatory to God
and the Savior. On less ground did the Revision
Committee expurgate the legend of the Pool of
Bethesda and the impotent man,^ wherein it is
stated in the King James and other old versions
that at certain periods an angel came down from
heaven and troubled its waters, and that whoso-
ever immediately stepped in or was put into the
pool was cured of whatever disease he had. And
that an impotent man who had long tried to get

* St. John, chap. v.

The Story of Jesus' Temptation 177

into the pool immediately after the water was so
troubled, but could not, was there immediately
cured by Jesus saying imto him, "Rise, take up
thy bed and walk."

The revisionists also intimate that the story of
the woman taken in adultery and brought before
Christ is an interpolation. Another miracle which
the revisionists certainly ought to have expur-
gated even without evidence of interpolation is
the story of the devils cast out of the insane man,*
asking and obtaining permission of Jesus to go into
a herd of swine feeding nearby, and then after en-
tering into them, driving all the swine into the Sea
of Galilee. Were the devils drowned as well as the
swine ? They certainly ought to have been ! Can
any sane person believe that God would or did
inspire the evangelist to write such a story? He
could only know it to be a fact through inspiration
from God. It might well have been presumed by
the revisers that the story was an interpolation
and was not in the original Gospel. The story
might well do for a companion piece to the fable in
Rev. Pick's book of Apocryphal Miracles, of Jesus,
when a child, turning some boys, who offended
Him by taunts and nicknames, into goats and
then shortly afterwards at the intercession of His
mother, transforming the goats into boys again.

Jesus we believe in as Son of God, the divine
man and prophet, peerless, of woman bom, and

* Matthew, chap, viii, verse 22.

178 Evolution of Religions

though humanly and really the son of Joseph and
Mary his wife, divinely created and inspired for
His great mission of pardon, humanity, liberty, and
truth to all the world ; truly, as Renan says, the
greatest, best, and noblest being who ever lived on
earth, and worthily the Son of God. Such fables
as the foregoing legends interwoven into the
Gospels only obscure His glory. Only one other
created being can we compare Him with, and that
was the great and mysterious Melchizedek, King
of Salem,* priest forever and Son of God, like Jesus
Christ, "who was without father, without mother,
without descent, having neither beginning of days
nor end of life." ^ This great and mysterious king
who is spoken of a number of times in the Bible
without much information being given about him,
and who was an associate and contemporary of the
patriarch Abraham, was most likely none other
than the great prophet Zoroaster, who lived and
taught only of the " most high God " at that time,
besides being, according to Persian traditions, a
king. The difference of names where the identity
of the person seems the same does not amoimt to
much, as Moses and Abraham, as well as Zara-
thustra or Zoroaster, have many various names in
the histories and traditions of Canaan, Egypt,
Arabia, and Persia. But the language, titles,

* Genesis, chap, xiv, verse i8.

^ Hebrews, chap, v, verse 6, and chap, vii, verses 1-4 in-
clusive.

The Story of Jesus' Temptation 179

styles, and descriptions of the Bible identify
Melchizedek with Zoroaster as the divinely sent
and great teacher of earth's most ancient rehgion,
and also as king, son, priest, and prophet, as was
Jesus two thousand years afterward, of the one
most high God. The singular terms in which
Melchizedek is spoken of, and the almost impene-
trable mystery which is left about him in the
Bible, seem to closely identify him with the Per-
sian and Chaldean traditions of the great and good
Zoroaster, who was said by ancient Persian legends
to have been taken to Heaven and had interviews
and instructions from God and His angels before
entering upon his ministry He and Jesus Christ
are the two greatest and grandest characters on
history's pages, and if Zoroaster and the mysteri-
ous Melchizedek are one and the same, then he
was a grand compeer of the great Nazarene. One
of our great secret orders perpetuates the name
of Jesus in its rituals, and another the name of
Melchizedek in its highest and final password and
ritual.

" Hail, patriarchs, hail! Behold in me
The Centre of your mystic ring,
Your password through eternity,
Melchizedek, your priest and king."

There are other narratives in the Bible which
from want of harmony with just and elevated
conception of deity, and on account of their

i8o Evolution of Religions

character and environments, only serve to illus-
trate human weakness and credulity, rather than
help sustain bibUcal authenticity or strengthen
the claim for its plenary inspiration. These in-
stances will readily occur from our point of view
to students well posted in the sacred text, and
need not be specifically referred to. And there
are also many minor differences in various state-
ments, such as the conduct of the malefactors
who were crucified with Jesus, ^ and also as to
what occurred to St. Paul in the theophany, or
divine vision, which was the instrument of his
conversion on his journey from Jerusalem to
Damascus for the purpose of persecuting the
followers of Christ,^ which contradictions, though
of course of small importance, squarely conflict
with the doctrine of inerrancy in all Scriptures,
because of errors in the originals or because of
errors in translations. But we will pass these
instances by merely with this brief reference to
them, and will only note, specially, one or two
more very prominent historical statements in the
Bible as bearing directly on the question of in-
ternal evidence of authenticity and plenary
inspiration.

In the Second Book of Chronicles ' we find an

* Matthew, chap, xxvii, verse 44, and Luke, chap, xxiii,
verse 40.

^ Acts, chap. X, verse 7, and chap, xxii, verse 9.
' Second Book of Chronicles, chap. xiii.

The Story of Jesus' Temptation i8i

account of a battle between the armies of the
petty kingdoms of Judah and Israel, or the ten
tribes, in which it is stated that the army of King
Jeroboam of Israel was defeated with a loss of
half a million of his chosen soldiers slain. This was
about 9 5 7 B . c. Now if the statement were that five
hundred thousand of Jeroboam's men had been
killed and wounded, it should tax human credulity
to the utmost, but the language is "slain,"
" killed," and it is incredible. The narrative does
not state how many of the soldiers of Judah and
Benjamin were slain. Probably a greater propor-
tion of killed to woimded occurred in the conflicts in
ancient times, when such weapons as spears, jave-
lins, battle axes, and swords were used at close
quarters and men fought with more savage fero-
city than in civilized warfare, but to such a vast
number killed there would probably be an equal
number wounded. Mind, the text says slain, and
if that is inspired, or even truthful if not in-
spired, it can't be argued that it means killed and
woimded both. So that understood as it reads, the
loss on the side of Israel alone was probably one
million men killed and wounded, and the loss on
both sides of one million five himdred thousand
men killed and wounded. Now the whole terri-
tory of both kingdoms did not comprise at that
period over fifteen thousand square miles, as most
of the outside territory of Edom, Moab, and other
regions conquered by King David had previously

i82 Evolution of Religions

revolted and regained their independence. Much
of Canaan was mountainous and desert.

The population of the tribes of Judah and
Benjamin at that time, including the city of
Jerusalem, was no doubt equal to the popula-
tion of the other ten tribes, and the aggregate
population of both kingdoms was not probably
over two million two hundred and twenty-five
thousand. Six hundred thousand was doubtless
the outside number of available soldiers of both
kingdoms. And yet we have in this historical
statement in the commonly accepted canonical
Book of Chronicles, a half million of the one army
of Israel slain in one battle, with a probable loss
in killed and woimded on both sides, according
to ordinary calculations, of one million five hun-
dred thousand men, or more than half the entire
population of the two kingdoms, estimating one
hundred and fifty people to the square mile, which
is a large estimate. The statement of the num-
ber killed in the battle is absurd. Any argument
as to its credibility would be simply a waste of
time, as much so indeed as it would have been
to discuss with George Rawlinson his belief that
actually the "sim stood still upon Gibeon and
the moon in the vale of Aijalon." ' We may say,
en passant, that writers upon the evidences of
Christianity and of biblical inspiration gener-
ally, by affirming the literal truths of all super-

* Evidences of Christianity, by George Rawlinson, pp. 87,
88.

The Story of Jesus' Temptation 183

natural occurrences in the Bible, including such
preposterous legends as Balaam and the ass, the
sun and moon standing still at Joshua's com-
mand, the poetic fictions of Jonah and the whale
and others of the same character, do much in this
age to impair the force of their arguments in
favor of the truth of other more reasonable
miraculous narrations and of biblical inspira-
tion of ethics, prophecies, and other divine
teachings.

In the great battle of Gettysburg, July first,
second, and third, 1863, in our Civil War, justly
regarded as the Waterloo of the Rebellion, in
which about two himdred thousand men fought
in desperate and bloody conflict for three days,
according to the ofificial accounts, only six thousand
three hundred and thirty-four were killed, and
twenty-eight thousand one hundred and eight
were woimded, a total of only thirty-four thou-
sand five hundred and forty-three killed and
wounded on both sides. With this single com-
parison, which we think is sufficient, of one great
battle with another, and fought under somewhat
similar circumstances, taking all the surroundings
into consideration, the grossness of the exaggera-
tion of the number killed in the army of Jeroboam
needs no further illustration to any reasonable
and well-informed mind. Of course, as we have
intimated, there have been no doubt other battles,
especially in ancient times, when the number of

i84 Evolution of Religions

killed and wounded were comparatively greater
than at Gettysburg, but no such slaughter ever
occurred in any battle upon earth, of which we
have any reliable history, as in the battle nar-
rated in Chronicles. A knowledge of the small
territorial area and population of Judah and Israel
assists in showing how grossly exaggerated that
historic statement must be. The Books of Chron-
icles were tindoubtedly written either during or
soon after the Babylonian exile, and the motives
for the exaggeration of the loss of the ten tribes
in the battle, and their terrible defeat, were prob-
ably mainly a desire to extol and glorify the
Davidic dynasty, and the hatred of the Jews
against their sister kingdom for rebellion against
that dynasty represented by King Solomon's son
Rehoboam, and the dismemberment of his grand-
father's empire, which hatred existed for centuries,
even after the Israelites had been conquered and
expatriated in 721 B.C. from their country by the
Assyrian monarch Shalmaneser, and so scattered
over Central Asia that henceforth their identity
not only as tribes, but even as Hebrews, was, and
has ever since been, utterly lost. Jewish his-
torians, poets, and prophets were always addicted
to extravagant adulations of David's royal
family, their reigns and conquests. The prophets
predicted that David's descendants should for-
ever occupy the throne of Judah, and that there
should be no end of his kingdom. But these

The Story of Jesus' Temptation 185

predictions of the prophets, along with many
others, were reversed by time and history.

The total destruction of the Assyrian army of
Sennacherib, of one hundred and eighty-five
thousand men in one night by an angel of the Lord,
has no historical corroboration in ancient annals,
sculptures, or otherwise. Dr. Briggs and other
scholars say the story is untrue. It may simply
have been a transposition of facts. His army,
or a part of it, may have possibly been caught in
and overwhelmed by a desert simoom in Arabia
or elsewhere . History says many thousands of the
army of Cambyses, king of Persia and Babylon,
were destroyed in a great sandstorm of the African
desert of Libya a century afterwards. A similar
disaster may have befallen the army of the Assyri-
ans, and Jewish poets ascribed it to the direct in-
tervention of the Almighty for vengeance upon
their enemies. Or the writer of Chronicles may
have confounded the story of Cambyses' disaster
with the Assyrian.

CHAPTER X

THE TRINITY

AS already said, the facts of Bible miracles, as
well as of the historical narratives, like all
other histories, sacred or profane, depend upon
evidence internal and external. Men generally
admit this proposition to be correct, and yet it is
a singular fact, in the discussion of biblical ques-
tions, that whenever any doubts are expressed con-
cerning the truth of certain occurrences in it, mi-
raculous or otherwise, or any commonly received
doctrines are denied, most Christians become in-
dignant and repel such doubts by charges of
heresy, imbelief, or atheism, and decry all criti-
cism as if all biblical subjects were too sacred for
investigation. Yet many of the books of the Bible
have come down to us without even the authority
of certainly known authorship. Books written
by well-known and reputable authors have a
prima facie claim to credibility, but without such
known authorships they have no such standing
per se, and should be judged solely upon their
merits. Age alone cannot authenticate books.
We know too well that ancient religious books as
well as ancient histories are full of exaggerations
and fabulous stories.

i86

The Trinity 187

The authorships imputed to most of our biblical
books we know have no authority, and as the
searching criticism of the present age has discov-
ered, are generally fictitious. Nearly all Jewish
and early Christian history was originally written
from tradition and folklore. Tradition, it is said,
"sometimes brings down truth that history has
let slip, but is oftener the wild fireside stories of the
times. " They had in ancient days no books such
as we have now. Manuscripts of vellum, Nile
papyrus, thin barks, or lambskin only were used,
and they were few and costly, and all written, imtil
a short time before the discovery of the art of
printing in 1452, without using chapters, sections,
verses, or punctuation, just a continuous mass of
letters, usually only consonants without vowels,
the connection of which into words, sentences,
and sense had to be deciphered by the subsequent
reader or translator of the manuscript as best
could be done. Hence additions and interpola-
tions were easily made by those wanting to support
their own theories or to establish certain states of
facts, and were difficult to detect. Copies were
few and costly, and marginal notes of previous
copyists and translators were often incorporated
into the original text, especially in religious and
controversialist writings. Such are known to be
facts. We know that the Gospels and Epistles of
the apostles, even more so than the books of the
Hebrew Bible, have been added to, interpolated,

i88 Evolution of Religions

and greatly changed in words and expression. We
now have no Christian or Jewish writings of the
first century a.d., excepting Flavins Josephus'
works, and some of Paul's Epistles. None of the
Gospels were written until long after the Epistles
were written, because the Epistles do not refer to
them.

Strange and extraordinary events never lose
anything, but usually gain much, in exaggeration
and embellishments by transmittal in popular
traditions, especially when fostered by religious
enthusiasm. All of Christ's life and teachings
and the apostolic missionary work of the first
century were only preserved in memory and tradi-
tions, at least until about its close. What an
opportunity in that superstitious age to build up
legends of the miraculous conception and birth of
Jesus, the satanic temptation, the miracles
narrated of Him and the circumstances connected
with His crucifixion and resurrection! Jesus, if
bom according to the common chronology, four
years before the beginning of a.d., was thirty-
seven years of age when the crucifixion took place,
^^ A.D. The Gospels were imdoubtedly written
after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Ro-
mans, which took place 69-70 a.d., and prob-
ably before the close of the century, and solely
from memories and traditions. The traditions
about Jesus in consequence of the imlimited faith
and devotion of His disciples and subsequent

The Trinity 189

converts, and the superstition of those times, we
can well beheve, from some of the Gospel miracu-
lous stories, as well as the amazing Apocryphal
legends which have come down to us through the
centuries, were astonishingly embellished and
magnified in rehearsals. Natural occurrences
were transformed into the miraculous. Angels
and demons were aroiind Him always.

It is only human nature and the experience and
history of all time about great founders of religion
that it should have been so. All manner of
traditions and legends of wonderful miracles were
intwined in after-years with the memories of
Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, Confucius, Buddha,
and Mohammed, as well as Jesus Christ. And so
the annals of all great men, conquerors, founders
of empires, etc., are crowded with stories of uni-
versally exaggerated deeds. Such is the result of
fame and human nature's worship of greatness
alone. Certainly Jesus with His wonderfully
magnetic and sympathetic character and His great
wisdom and imerring knowledge of human nature,
even if not accompanied with supernatural
powers, was enabled to perform many wonderful
works, such as curing the sick, imparting strength
to the weak, and restoring the insane to their
right minds, which doubtless became the basis
of the future traditions of His miracles. He
was doubtless really, as He was called, "the great
physician" of bodily ailments as well as of souls.

iQo Evolution of Religions

Curing the insane in those days was popularly be-
lieved to be "casting out devils." All persons
afflicted with liinacy were supposed to be demonia-
cally possessed. But we should note that even to
Jesus' powers, however great and however derived,
there were undoubtedly limitations, depending
greatly upon the faith and devotion of His follow-
ers.* When in Galilee, His native country, "He
could do no mighty works because of their imbe-
lief." Such little apparently casual statements
we note often illustrate biblical narratives and
teachings more clearly sometimes than whole
pages do. These few words of the evangelists
absolutely nulHfy the doctrine of the Trinity. If
Jesus were divine, as one of the persons or incar-
nations of the Deity, the belief or tmbelief of peo-
ple in Him could be of no manner of consequence
to His powers. He might, because of their want of
faith in Him, refuse to perform miracles or mighty
works, but the texts cited emphatically say "He
could not." Here en passant we desire to say
that it is very much to be regretted that the great
French savant, Dr. Ernest Renan, one of the forty
"immortals" of the French Academy of Sciences,
and a sincerely good man, in his " Life of Christ," a
most attractive and doubtless mainly accurate
biography, should feel himself called upon to ac-
cotmt for some of the Savior's wonderful works by
suggesting that He sometimes used thaumaturgic
* Matthew, chap, xiii, verse 5. Mark vi, verse 8.

The Trinity 191

arts ! That is the only unpleasant thing, the only
faux pas in its pages, to mar the charm of that
elegant and sympathetic biography of the great
prophet of humanity, who Renan truthfully de-
clares, from the absolutely reliable testimony we
have as to His life and character, was the great-
est and best man who ever has lived or probably
ever will live on earth.

Short as His life was and brief as His bio-
graphies, enough is known of Jesus, which is true
beyond all question in the Gospels, apostolic
Epistles and traditions, to demonstrate that He
was more than human and grandly above all
other men, the incarnation of truth, purity, and
goodness, absolutely incapable of resorting to any
device, sham, or deception, and that whatever
mysterious works He actually performed, were
done through His own power or divine assistance.
Some of the stories of His miracles as transmitted
down to us may be fables. But that He had al-
most unbounded influence over His followers,
their devotion to Him in life, and their entire self-
abnegation in His name and cause after His death,
in lives of missionary privations and ultimately
martyrdoms, sufficiently attest. When a mere
child, a rustic from the obscure village of Naza-
reth in Galilee, He almost paralyzed with aston-
ishment the haughty priests and scribes of the
Temple by His perplexing questions and won-
derful answers. His great knowledge of Jewish

192 Evolution of Religions

institutions and history and profound grasp of all
theological and moral subjects were astonishing.
Whence came all His knowledge and the lucid
and beautiful language in which His teachings
were expressed? His parents and surroundings
could not have imparted such culture to Him. He
had brothers and sisters and they were very ordi-
nary persons. He had unquestionably commun-
ion with God in some way, such as they wot not of.
There is a hiatus of eighteen years in His life, from
twelve years of age until He came to John at the
river Jordan to be baptized at thirty years of age.
What was Jesus doing all these years ? If at home
working with His father at the carpenter's bench,
He must have been employing all His leisure hours
in commtinion with God and in studying diligently
any manuscripts of Jewish literature He could
get. And He may have been away in Persia,
among the Jews there, studying the great religion
of Zoroaster, or in India studying Buddhism.
Many of His teachings are but amplifications of
theirs. The legend of His conception and birth
is the same as Buddha's, excepting that the Christ
was the son of a Galilean peasant woman, and
Buddha was the son of an Indian queen. There
is a strange similarity in the stories of the advent
of the mysterious Melchizedek, king of Salem,
Buddha, and Jesus Christ, excepting that Melchiz-
edek is said to have been "without father, with-
out mother, without descent,^ having neither be-

* Hebrews, chap. vii. verse 3.

The Trinity 193

ginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto
the Son of God, abideth a priest continually."
Some theologians have supposed Melchizedek and
Jesus Christ to be one and the same incarnation
of deity. If they were, why not also Buddha?
His life and teachings were very similar to the
Savior's, and a religion which is twenty-five hun-
dred years old, and whose followers yet number
one-third of the human race, certainly was from
God. Jesus may also have known and studied
Confucius's works. Confucius gave first the Golden
Rule to the world, and of the precepts of men who
antedated the Christian era, none are better
known and few are cherished as his simple Ana-
lects. In a rather interesting work, partly true and
partly fictitious, entitled "Jesat Nassar, " pub-
lished in 1890 by a learned Jewish family named
Mamroevs, Jesus is represented as having spent
most of the years of his youth traveling in the
countries surrounding Palestine, seeking and
acquiring knowledge. But whether their sugges-
tions are correct or not, Jesus was evidently an
extraordinarily gifted being, and endowed with
wisdom and knowledge unaccountable from the
usual conceptions of His youth's surroundings.
But do the Scriptures teach that He is God ? In
order to believe so, we must so arbitrarily con-
strue sundry mysterious and ambiguous passages,
and distort or disbelieve Jesus' own positive and
imqualified declarations, " I can of mine own self

194 Evolution of Religions

do nothing. My Father is greater than I. " ' And
many similar and equally clear and positive asser-
tions of His subjection to and dependence upon
God, which He made on various occasions, some of
which we heretofore quoted.^ In a few of Jesus'
sayings there is apparently some mystery as to
His sonship and preexistence, but in those quoted
there is none as to His divinity. They are clear-
cut and thoroughly explicit in stating His inferi-
ority to God and absolute submission to His will.

Coming down to us through sixteen centuries
of orthodox translations and manipulations of
the Gospels, why should they not be understood
and believed just as spoken by Jesus ? Why under
such circumstances discard His clear and em-
phatic utterances and build up mystic and incom-
prehensible creeds based upon some other myste-
rious expressions and upon supposed conditions of
human relations to God that never had any but
an imaginary existence? And if Jesus made the
distinct disavowals of divinity and declared His
dependence upon and filial submission to His
Heavenly Father's will as quoted, then the doc-
trine of the Trinity is not true, nor countenanced
by anything He said, but is solely an invention
of ecclesiasticism

Just as are, and have no more scriptural author-
ity, the third and fourth sections of the Westmin-

» John, chap, v, verse 30, and chap, xiv, verse 28.
» See page 55.

The Trinity 195

ster Confession of Faith, which are as positively
enunciated as the doctrine of the Trinity is, viz.
Section three : " By the decree of God for the mani-
festation of His glory some men and angels are
predestined imto everlasting life, and others fore-
ordained imto everlasting death." Section four:
" These angels and men thus predestined and fore-
ordained are particularly and unchangeably de-
signed, and their nimiber is so certain and definite
that it cannot be either increased or diminished."
That is absolute election and predestination.
These dogmas are mere inventions of fanaticism
and bigotry and are wholly unauthorized by the
general tone of the Scriptures. They are a mere
sectarian patchwork made up from a few isolated
expressions of St. Paul's and other apostolic
writings, based upon the fable of Eden and the
great temptation of Matthew and Luke's Gospels,
and the intangible dreams of the Apocalyptic
revelations, but only through far-fetched construc-
tions and distortions of their meanings. There
are no reasonable grounds for any such unnatural
metaphorical, or mystical construction or inter-
pretation of Jrsus' teachings either in relation to
His sonship to God, or to the awful doctrine of the
eternal predestined ruin and misery of nearly
all the human race. Those doctrines were grad-
ually evolved by the Church of the Dark Ages;
thi^y were not beliefs of primitive Christianity.
When Rome became the Church, all Christians

196 Evolution of Religions

were required to believe those and other orthodox
dogmas under penalty of anathemas, of temporal
and eternal ruin. And when conditions pre-
vented orthodoxy from enforcing and perpetuat-
ing them by such means, it has sought to do so by
distortions of scriptural teachings, and all manner
of sophistry. Much of the literature of the ages
has been perverted to such purposes. In one of
the sublimest poems ever written, the Russian
poet Derzhavin's "Invocation to God," which has
never been surpassed for beauty and grandeur by
anything in the Bible, or in any book or language,
a forgery has been perpetrated in some of its pub-
lications years after its first appearance by some
trinitarian bigot, by changing the fifth line of the
first stanza, which reads as originally written,
"Being above all Beings, mighty one," into "Be-
ing above all Beings, three in one," thus not only
spoiling the grandeur of the poem, but making
the author do what he never intended to do, teach
the doctrine of the Trinity. Derzhavin wrote this
peerless song of sublimest adoration to God in
1 810, He died July, 1816.

The tenets of the first three centuries of the
Christian churches — for there was then no para-
mount church nor any distinctive creed — were
mainly the same as those sustained by Arius, Pela-
gius, Celestius, and Julian, Bishop of Eclanum, in
Italy, during the ecclesiastical conflicts of the
fourth century. Those tenets were clearly set

The Trinity i97

forth by Celestius when the question of his ordina-
tion to the ministry came up in the famous Coimcil
of Carthage, 411 a.d. Those tenets were:

First. That Adam would have died even if he
had not sinned.

Second. Adam's sin injured him only, not the
race.

Third. Children are bom as pure as Adam was
before he fell.

Fourth. Men neither die because Adam fell, nor
rise again in consequence of Christ's resurrection.

Fifth. Unbaptized as well as baptized infants
are saved.

Sixth. The law, i.e., Mosaic, as well as the
Gospels, leads to heaven.

Seventh. Even before Christ's advent there
were sinless men.

These grand, true, and beautiful tenets of Celes-
tius and his colleagues were supported by a great
many of the bishops, and particularly most of the
Asiatic and African bishops, at this council, but
they were all condemned by a majority and his
ordination was refused.

After that council the doctrines of orthodoxy
made rapid progress under the sanction and domi-
nation of Rome, though in the Eastern churches
there were still many Arians, as those holding the
above tenets were generally called. The Arians
believed in the divine sonship of Jesus, but not in
the Trinity. But there were, even among Trinita-

198 Evolution of Religions

rians, for centuries afterwards, many conflicting
opinions notwithstanding the decision of the
Council of Carthage and the teachings of Chrysos-
tom, Origen, St. Augustine, Athanasius, and
others, and orthodoxy was only finally formu-
lated into its present dogmas by Anselm, Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, England, about iioo a.d.
He was the leader of medieval scholastic Christi-
anity. There has always, however, been a con-
flict between extreme and moderate orthodoxy,
the former represented by the school of St. Augus-
tine, Calvin, and Presbyterianism generally, and
the moderates by Semi-Pelagians and Arminians,
chief of whom were Arminius, Wesley, and the
modern Methodists, differing mainly upon the
questions of man's status after the fall and the
eternal decrees of God in election, foreordination,
and predestination. One of Calvin's theses was
that, "Such moreover was the relation subsisting
between Adam and his descendants, that God
righteously regards and treats each one as he
comes into being, as worthy of the punishment of
Adam's sin, and consequently withholds His
life, giving fellowship from Him."

Jonathan Edwards in one of his sermons re-
presents the Almighty as holding each one of
Adam's posterity over the yawning fiery gulf of
hell and threatening to drop them therein, and
only restrained by unmerit-^d compassion and
grace through Christ to save the predestined

The Trinity 199

elect. Furthermore, he says that the happiness
of the redeemed in heaven would be enhanced,
instead of being imbittered, by the knowledge
that others of their fellow-creatures (this includes,
we suppose, near and dear ones when on earth)
were suffering eternal torments, by reflecting upon
the infinite love which had without any merits of
their own chosen and preserved them to eternal
happiness.^ And the man who taught the above,
and much more of the same kind of blasphemy
was considered in his day a great Christian divine,
an exemplar and teacher of his fellow-men, and his
works were standard doctrine imtil fifty years ago.
He may have been a good man in his way, but his
ideas of divine justice, mercy, and love are in-
comprehensible and awful.

Arminius denied the doctrines of election and
predestination, and the personal guilt of Adam's
descendants in his fall, but affirmed all the other
tenets of orthodoxy. Whatever may be the re-
lation of Jesus Christ to God, and whether He was
of supernatural conception and birth. He is not
God, nor does the Bible anywhere teach that He is.
Jesus, we affirm and believe, is Son of God, not only
in the sense in which Adam is called the "son of
God," ' and as patriarchs and prophets are fre-
quently styled in the Bible, "sons of God," be-
cause of their service, obedience, and faithfulness

1 Edwards* Sermons, ii and 13.
' Luke, chap, iii, verse 38.

200 Evolution of Religions

to Him, but also as the inspired prophet and Mes-
siah of the universal religion ushered in by Him.
As to His parentage, Jesus was undoubtedly
from His birth believed by His relatives and Gali-
lean countrymen to be the son of Joseph and Mary
his wife. The story of the espousal only, before
Jesus' conception is doubtless a part of the sacred
myth, but if true, and the actual marriage or
coming together had not already taken place, it
made, according to Jewish custom, virtually no
difference, and no discredit to parents or child.
We know from Jewish literature that the be-
trothal was the higher and more sacred obligation,
and the marriage ceremony afterward, if per-
formed, only confirmatory and not essential. The
couple were really after the espousal, husband and
wife, and a legal divorce was necessary to release
them from betrothal bonds. Doubtless they
were married, and the myth of Jesus' nativity
grew up after He became famous, most probably
long after His crucifixion. It was part of the
myth of His supernatural conception to affirm that
Joseph and Mary had not previously lived in
marriage relation. After Jesus' wonderful career
and His departure from earth. He was virtually
deified by His followers, and when the Gospels
were written about the close of the century, all
sorts of legends were rife concerning Him, multi-
plied and magnified immensely by the terrible
scenes and experiences of the war with the Ro-

The Trinity 201

mans, and the utter destruction of Jerusalem and
desolation of all Palestine.

Many apocryphal gospels and teachings of
Jesus were written, some before and some after
the four Canonical Gospels. Among these were
the Arabic gospel of the childhood of Jesus, the
gospel of St. Thomas, the gospel of St. James,
the gospel of Joseph the carpenter, the gospel of
Pseudo Matthew, or logia of Matthew, the Evan-
gelium Nicodemi, and a number of others, all still
wholly, or partially extant. All these, concurring
in much, and differing in many essentials from
each other and from the Canonical Gospels, were
in common circulation and largely believed for cen-
turies.* The Canonical Gospels, as said by John,'
did not nearly contain all the sayings and miracles
of Jesus. The spirit of exaggeration and the
marvelous, which filled the popular legends about
Him, is clearly manifested by the same apostle, in
saying, that if all the things which He did were
written, he, the apostle, "supposed that even the
world itself could not contain the books." In
reality, the world was full of mythical and legend-
ary stories about Him, many of which, as col-
lected by Rev. B. Peck, already mentioned,
though amazingly ridiculous, astonishing, and in-
credible, were for centuries believed in by Chris-

* St. Luke, chap, i, verse i, indorses them, or similar gos-
pels or declarations.

' St. John, chap, xxi, verse 25.

202 Evolution of Religions

tians generally. Some of them, including the many-
marvelous stories of Jesus' supernatural birth,
doubtless had much influence in fashioning the
narratives of the two evangelists. In fact, as
we know from traditions, the Canonical Gospels
were only a choice of material from among many
manuscripts.

We have no knowledge that any of Christ's
works or sayings were kept otherwise than in
memory and tradition tmtil a half century or more
after His death. None of the evangelists except-
ing John, profess to have been cognizant of what
they wrote. The authorship of all is uncertain.
The stories of Jesus' conception and birth as
narrated in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
were certainly unknown in His lifetime. He never
referred even most distantly to them. At any
rate, bom of honest parents and in wedded love,
there can be no sensible reason given why, if so
bom, Jesus was not as pure and sinless as if bom
from mere virginal or theophanic conception.
God was the Almighty Father in either case, and
all rational beings are His children. There is
absolutely nothing holier in the universe, we
affirm, than honest maternity, nor more sinless,
innocent, and pure than a child bom of wedded
love. It is God's grandest and most beautiful
conception and creation of an immortal being,
and it is an insult to its parents to say that it " was
conceived in sin and bom in iniquity," which is

The Trinity 203

merely a refrain of the old Mephistophelian story
of the fall. We repudiate such doctrine and
wonder that every good and virtuous woman in
the world does not repudiate and scorn it as un-
just and false. The dogmas that all are bom in
sin and fit only and justly doomed to be damned
from birth, was a product of superstition, priest-
craft, and fanaticism, and has done more to
degrade woman and keep her in the old-time con-
dition of semi-slavery than any other tenet of reli-
gion. No wonder that the Moslem, believing in
the innate impurity and sinfulness of woman, and
through Eve the cause of sin and death, grudgingly
admits her to his celestial paradise at all, and only
as the slave of her husband and his immortal houri.
The ancient monkish Christian conception of her
position in the orthodox scheme of salvation was
not much more alluring than the Islamites.

Jesus' mother said to Him, when as a youth of
twelve He was found by herself and her husband
in the Temple at Jerusalem among the rabbis
and priests asking and answering great questions,
"Son, why hast thou done thus? Behold, thy
father and I have sought thee sorrowing."
Would she have spoken thus of Joseph as His
father if the story of His supernatural birth were
true? Nor did she ever otherwise intimate that
He was any other than her and Joseph's son, the
same as His brothers and sisters. We find nu-
merous records of Jesus having had brothers and

204 Evolution of Religions

sisters mentioned in the Bible.* As one of the
sequences of the doctrine of the utter sinfulness
and total depravity of man, as a result of the
Edenic fall, which was mainly evolved in the
fourth and fifth centuries after Christ (we have no
evidence that it was ever taught earlier) by
Athanasius, Chrysostom, Origen, St. Augustine,
and other mystics, the fanatical priests and monks
(celibates living secluded from the world to avoid
its temptations and contaminations) in the moim-
tains and deserts of Palestine, Arabia, and Libya,
taught and believed (the denial of the dogma was
afterwards made mortal heresy by the church,
consigning the heretic to eternal damnation) that
no one bom of woman by natural conception
could possibly be from birth sinless or other than
an heir of hell, through Adam's fall alone, even if
he in life afterward committed no actual sins.
Hence the doctrine of the supernatural conception
of Jesus was deemed necessary, as one of the per-
sons of the Trinity, in the scheme of atonement,
and was so formulated. This was after the final
triumph of Rome in 411 a.d. at the Council of
Carthage over the primitive Unitarian faith of
Arianism. That Council heralded to the world the
tenets of orthodoxy mainly in the form they have
since been taught.

* Matthew, chap, xii, verse 46; chap, xiii, verse 55. Mark,
chap, vi, verse 33; chap, xv, verse 40. John, chap, ii, verse
12; chap, vii, verse 5.

The Trinity 205

Many Fathers of the early centuries of the
Church, as well as ascetics and monks, decried
marriage and rapturously extolled celibacy and
virginity. Women, Chrysostom said, were neces-
sary, evils and their beauty and winsome ways a
curse to men, and that even the natural union and
cohabitation in marriage were sinful, though he
admitted marriage was originally ordained of God
to procreate the human race. St. Augustine, after
reformation from his early years of unbridled and
reckless vice and libertinism, taught the same
morbid asceticism and abstinence from marriage.
Thus, doubtless, the legend of the supernatural
or theophanic conception of the Virgin Mary was
the product of the monastic idea of the impurity
of the union of husband and wife, and that a holy
child could not be bom of such union. It was
simply an exemplification of the theory of original
sin, mainly, that since the fall it was the order of
nature and consequently the will of God that
every descendant of Adam and Eve should be
bom in sin, hence, according to St. Augustine
and Calvin, all were bom inevitably lost sinners.
These ideas were the inspiration of the story of the
theophanic conception of Mary, evolved in the
second century, perhaps later. It did not exist
in Jesus' lifetime, and we do not know that it was
in the original Gospels. No mention is made of it
in the apostolic Epistles or in any writings of the
second century. Paul did not know of it when

2o6 Evolution of Religions

he wrote Romans.^ When it was evolved to
gratify Jewish vanity and the Jewish devotees,
who mainly composed the church of the first and
second centuries, by claiming the fulfillment of old
prophetic mysterious predictions in regard to the
perpetuity of King David's throne and the future
coming of a prince of that line, which was the dream
and hope of the Jews for ages amidst all the
disasters which overtook and f oho wed them, the
parentage and descent of Jesus as the Messiah
were attempted to be traced back to David. But
no such lineage is shown through Mary. Only the
lineage of Jesus from David through Joseph
is shown.^

Only Matthew and Luke of the evangelists
give genealogies, and they show the descent of
Jesus through Joseph from David through dif-
ferent lines of ancestors, probably paternal and
maternal. No descent of Mary from David is
shown. If she had such descent, her genealogy
would undoubtedly have been given. But the
importance of the combination does not seem to
have dawned upon the evangelists, as seen in after-
times. The assumption of orthodox writers of
past or present ages, that Mary was of David's
line, is wholly gratuitous and without any foun-
dation in the Gospels or elsewhere. She has no
other history. Hence, if Joseph was not Jesus'

' Romans, chap, i, verse 3.

2 Matthew, chap. i. Luke, chap, iii

The Trinity 207

father, there is absolutely nothing in the Gospels
or elsewhere to show that Jesus was of the lin-
eage of King David, and consequently the pro-
phetic predictions which were supposed to have
centered in Him as a Prince of David's blood,
and which are so often quoted, were never ful-
filled and did not apply to Him at all. The story
of Jesus having been bom, not at Nazareth
(though He is always called the Nazarene and
never the Bethlehemite), the home of Joseph
and of Mary, but at Bethlehem, the "City of
David," and far away from His parents' home,
which was invented, probably, to claim the ful-
fillment of old biblical prophecies, would be of no
consequence if He were not Joseph's son, even if
it were true. But it is probably not true histori-
cally, for the census of Quirinus ^ did not take
place, as has been proved by Roman Imperial
records, until 6-7 a.d., when Jesus was, accord-
ing to chronological data, ten or eleven years old.^
Moreover, it is unreasonable to believe that the
Roman pro-consul Quirinus or Cyrenius should
have had old Jewish genealogical records hunted
and searched, for the purpose of determining
where an obscure Galilean and his family should
be enrolled in a Roman census, and on account
of an obsolete family tradition, that his ances-

* Luke, chap, ii, verses 1-7 inclusive.

* Briggs, Stud}' of Holy Scripture, page 530, where the
story of the census is shown to be untrue.

2o8 Evolution of Religions

tors once lived at Bethlehem centuries before,
should have cited Joseph, a poor man and un-
known outside of his native village, to go from
Nazareth to distant Bethlehem with his yoimg
wife to be listed.

The story was evidently framed long after Jesus'
crucifixion in order to have His birthplace ac-
cord with an old prophetic declaration,^ and
remodeled to suit the occasion, which predic-
tion was probably made about the time the ten
tribes of Israel were carried into captivity, and
referred to the hope of a prince of David's line
who should in future time come and rule over
the reunited children of Judah and the remnants
of Israel. The song of the angels at the birth
of Jesus was more likely heard among the roman-
tic hills and vales of Nazareth and over the blue,
starlit Sea of Galilee than over the plain of Bethle-
hem. The shepherds were more probably watch-
ing their flocks in the fields in the soft moonlit
evenings of May than in the wintry nights of
Christmas tide. As Jesus was frequently styled
in the Gospels and Epistles "the Son of David,"
He must perforce, therefore, as the writers of
them had no evidence of Mary, His mother, being
of the lineage of David, have been really regarded
by them, notwithstanding the legend of His mi-
raculous birth, as Joseph's son, and hence a descen-
dant of David. St. Mark and St. John in their

* Micah, chap, v, verse 2.

The Trinity 209

Gospels do not even allude to the story of His
supernatural birth, which is certainly unaccount-
able, if known to or believed by them.

The unadorned facts of the Gospels carefully
considered and harmonized with all the meager
traditional light of those days, seem to dissipate
the myth, and teach that Jesus was really the son
of Joseph and Mary. By His relatives and
neighbors Jesus was universally regarded as
their son. So Paul teaches.* The legends of St.
Matthew and St. Luke are contrary to their genea-
logies, and the genealogies are pointless and value-
less if they do not show His descent from Joseph.
If the theory of the theophanic conception of Jesus
was, that He was to be bom merely as an incarna-
tion of Deity, He could have no hereditary or other
taint from His mother, of original sin, even if His
mother were not immaculate or had not been her-
self conceived without any taint of sin. The
Catholic Church only, of all the churches of Chris-
tendom, teaches, as we imderstand, that Mary was
herself immaculately conceived and bom sinless to
become the " Mother of God," as Catholics style
her. This dogma was first enunciated at a general
coimcil of Catholic clergy in 511 A.D., but never
formally adopted and proclaimed by the Church un-
til so proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in his bull styled
" Infallibilus Deus, " on December 8, 1854, with the
assent of nearly all the cardinals of the church.
* Romans, chaps, i and Hi.

2IO Evolution of Religions

The bull declared "that the most blessed Vir-
gin Mary in the first moment of her conception,
by a special grace and privilege of Almighty God,
in virtue of the merits of Christ, was preserved
immaculate from all stain of sin." The dogma
has no Scripture authority whatever, and is imi-
versally rejected by the Greek and all Protestant
churches. Moreover, it is unnecessary, for if
God could make the Virgin Mary immaculate
from the moment of her conception. He could as
well ordain the immaculate conception and birth
of Jesus, either as Deity incarnated, or as God's
divine Son, or the son of Joseph and Mary. With
God nothing is impossible. If Jesus was an apo-
theosis of Deity, really only God manifested in hu-
man form, then He was as already said only God,
and there could be no duality or trinity of being
in Him as a mere manifestation of God. He was
in such case really and only God, and it mattered
not in that case whether His human mother,
merely so for the incarnation, was immaculate or
not, for He would be sinless as God. But if only
a demi-son of God, if there are hereditary im-
puted taints of original sin, as orthodoxy teaches,
as well as hereditary tendencies to sin and disease
as of other human traits, personally, mentally,
and morally, they would be inherited and trans-
mitted from the mother alone as well as from a
parentage of both human father and mother. If
a child could through divine power be conceived

The Trinity 211

and bom free from those hereditary strains from
a non -immaculate mother, as Mary's mother is
presumed to have been, it could also be preserved
from them by the same power through a non-im-
maculate father. Hence, if such divine interfer-
ence, according to the Catholic doctrine, in the
case of Mary at her own conception or at the con-
ception of Jesus, took place and she was made
immaculate, so could a human father be made
immaculate by the same divine power. So there
was apparently, according to the Catholic dogma,
no necessity morally for the theophanic concep-
tion of Mary, even if Jesus was to be a human
sinless bom son of God, or a preexistent created
being going through a reincarnation or new birth,
and not absolutely and only God, the Almighty
manifested in human body.

We desire to be reverent, but think it right to
consider these questions in all their bearings, as
from the two evangelists' narratives of Jesus'
nativity in connection with the story of Eden and
the fall and the Apocalypse of St. John, the
doctrines of the Trinity and the vicarious atone-
ment of Jesus have been entirely formulated.
The story of the virgin's conception of Jesus seems
to be merely a mythical legend without any
reasons for it or proof of it. According to the
doctrine of the immaculate conception, Jesus
could have been bom as absolutely pure and
sinless, as the son of Joseph and Mary, as from

212 Evolution of Religions

theophanic agency. The story is certainly an en-
tirely unnatural one, and so challenges the most
rigid examination. It depends entirely upon the
statements of the two evangelists, and to them it
could only have been communicated nearly a cen-
tury after its occurrence by God alone, through
direct communication. Did He do so ? The world
wants some corroborative proof. The same applies
to the immaculate conception ; all the disquisitions
and speculations about it are merely mystical,
scholastic, and ecclesiastical theories without any
scriptural support whatever.

What does it all amount to? Jesus, if God in-
carnated through birth from Mary, was only the
one God Almighty still. If a Son of God previ-
ously created and living in Heaven, from the be-
ginning of the ages and reborn supematurally
through Mary, He was only a fellow-creature and
higher Son of God than if of the blood of Joseph
and Mary. In either case Jesus had but one
Father, God, and doubtless He says to all His
followers as said the glorious angel in Revelation
to John, " See thou worship me not, for I am thy
fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets
and of them which keep the sayings of this Book,
worship only God."

Jesus was known all His life by His neighbors
of Nazareth as the son of Joseph, nor was there
ever during His lifetime any intimation of mystery
about His birth or parentage, or that He was other

The Trinity 213

than the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary. Who
Mary was we are not told. No genealogy of her
was ever given by the evangelists, and she was
doubtless a GaHlean peasant girl, of good but
obscure family. The legends of Matthew and
Luke about Jesus' birth savor much of similar
fancies in the Egyptian and Hindoo religions about
the births of Osiris and Buddha.

He was the grandest and best of men, as truly
the Son of God by His life of absolute devotion to
His service and the welfare of men, as if the story
of His supernatural conception was literally true.
Evidently if the story were extant in His day
Jesus attached no importance to it, for He never
once alluded to it. He left of His life work and
teachings not a line, not even so much as a "writ-
ing in the sand." ^ The only memorials He left
were in the remembrances of His devoted disciples.
Never had any men a grander, nobler leader, nor
ever king, conqueror, or prophet, braver or more
faithful followers, willing for His memory and the
faith he left them to sacrifice everything they had
on earth, to meet the bitterest persecution and
even cruel martyrdoms, without a fear or murmur.
Glorious leader! But whether of theophanic con-
ception or the son of Joseph and Mary, aside from
its bearing on the doctrine of the Trinity, matters
really but little. Jesus was in either case among
His fellow-men preeminently the Son of God, the
* John, chap, viii, verses 6-8.

214 Evolution of Religions

Prophet of prophets, the divine Teacher, and His
peerless life and work left a record in the hearts
of His disciples and a perennial influence for good,
such as no other man, bom of woman, ever did,
and which in His rehgion will contiaue, we be-
lieve, through all the ages of time, ever expand-
ing until it covers the earth. Only Zoroaster of
Persia, Buddha, and Confucius ever approxi-
mately wielded the influence on the destinies
of the world which Jesus Christ has done.
Their spheres of influence never were so broad,
and in the centuries past have been diminishing.
His has been expanding wider and wider, es-
pecially during the last few centuries, and will
apparently soon be imiversal. His kingdom,
power, and glory are the same, whether He was
of earthly or heavenly origin.

The "open sesame" to a broad and consistent
interpretation of the Holy Bible and honest ob-
servance of its ethics, is to be foimd in the short
but sublime and all comprehensive creed of the
Prophet Micah.^ "What is it, O man, that thy
Lord doth require of thee, but to do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
Just before^ the prophet said: "Will the Lord be
pleased with ten thousands of rams, or with ten
thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first-
bom for my transgression, the fruit of my body

1 Micah, chap, vi, verse 8.
^ Micah, chap, vi, verse 7.

The Trinity 215

for the sin of my soul?" This summary of our
whole duty to God and men, and condemnation of
all sacrifices, is a negation of all dogmas, rites, and
mysteries which seek to make any other condi-
tions and requisites for religious justification
than merely walking himibly with God, as best we
know how; a creed vastly grander and more
comprehensive than the Athanasian, Nicene,
the so-called Apostles', or any other sectarian
formula limiting God's sovereignty and man's
opportunities. It is world-wide and imiversal,
infolding in its divine circle of grace, Jews and
Gentiles, all nations and faiths who will live up to
those precepts. All other dogmas of religion are
unnecessary. The Ten Commandments of Moses,
the Sermon on Moimt of Olives, and the Lord's
Prayer, the sublimest ever uttered, are only ex-
emplifications of Micah's creed. Whatever in the
pages of Holy Scripture will stand the test of and
square with Micah's creed and the Lord's Prayer,
and with rational conceptions of infinite power,
omniscience, omnipresence, and love, we believe
is inspired of God, and whatsoever is not in har-
mony with such tests is only of man. Such is
our creed, so we hold. So we understand the
Bible and its every page. The creed of Micah
came surely from the Holy Spirit, and to the
honest, fearless seeker after truth, the Holy Spirit
will surely illuminate everything in the Bible as
truth, or error inspiration, or non-inspiration.

2i6 Evolution of Religions

Holding to such creed as our sure anchor, the
Doctrine of the Inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as
enunciated by Dr. Briggs, is correct, but with-
out such test and anchor of faith, it may, to the
sectary and fanatic, be a mere "Ignis Fatuus. "
It does not make much difference, so long as a
man's faith is anchored upon such a rock, what
his mere theoretical religion may be, if he honestly
and diligently seeks the truth, and in all things
lives up to the best light he has. A very good
creed also is one said to be that of the Rev. John
Watson, an able writer whose literary cognomen
is "Ian Maclaren, " of Liverpool, England, for-
merly, if not now, a Presbyterian minister: "I
believe in the Fatherhood of God. I believe in
the words of Jesus. I believe in the pure heart.
I believe in the service of love. I believe in the
unworldly life. I believe in the beatitudes. I
promise to trust God and follow Christ, to forgive
my enemies, and to seek after the righteousness of
God." What more is required? It is the duty
of every hiiman being and his privilege, too, to
follow his convictions of truth, when his mind is in
a sane and normal condition, wherever such
convictions may lead him amidst the infinite
varieties of life's duties, always following justice
and mercy, and doing no wrong to any of his
fellow-beings. The best and truest religion, the
divine one, is the religion which makes men and
women happiest and best, most pure, unselfish.

The Trinity 217

and useful in their daily lives and conduct. Such
is the test of true religion. Such religion is the
safe one for time, safe for eternity, and it needs
no creed made out of old dogmas to hedge it
aroimd.

CHAPTER XI

RELIGIOUS MISCELLANIES

FURTHER considering the internal evidences
of biblical plenary inspiration, it should
be said that while the Bible is a storehouse of
grand and sublime truths, scintillating like dia-
monds, throughout all its pages, yet even in the
sphere of ethical teachings there are some defects
in it which are not in harmony with the character
of God as taught therein, and hence cannot be
inspired. For instance, God would hardly have
directed the Israelites, as we are told in Exodus,^
to borrow vessels of gold and jewels of silver from
their Egyptian neighbors under the specious
promise of returning them after they should come
back from a three days' journey, for a picnic, into
the wilderness of Arabia, when it was well known
to the Israelites that this was a false pretense, and
that the real purpose was to rob the Egyptians.
Moral ideas, the distinction between Meum and
Tuum, were not highly developed in those days,
and Moses seemed to imagine that God was as
ready to plunder the Egyptians as His people
were, and, therefore, he said so. They had, it is

' Exodus, chaps, xi and xii.
218

Religious Miscellanies 219

true, been heavily oppressed and wronged for a
few years, but the sons of Ham had given them
homes and lands several hundreds of years before,
had fed their starving bands of nomads, and been
very kind to them. The memory of those bene-
factions and good treatment, until the one
Pharaoh reigned who "knew not" Joseph, ought
to have kept the Hebrews from deceitfully robbing
them.

It is not possible, at any rate, that God directed
them to get even with their oppressors through
such deception and false pretenses.

There are many other inconsistencies and im-
perfections of character ascribed to God, many
expressions of merely human passions, feelings of
cruelty, hatred, vengeance. Many contradictory
eniinciations of moral obligations and purposes,
which we instinctively feel could not have been
expressed by God, and hence must be either per-
versions of His commands, or merely interpola-
tions or expressions of the feelings and passions
of the writers. To sustain these statements, we
do not need to go to outside reviews or commen-
taries, but to the "Law and Testimony" itself.
God is ever one and the same, always consistent,
changeless, and can never under any circumstances
be influenced by or give utterance to base and
cruel human feelings and passions, and wherever
in the pages of the Bible He is represented as so
influenced, it is not inspiration from Him, but

220

Evolution of Religions

merely human conceptions of Deity which, are so
portrayed. We do not here refer to expressions in
the Bible of God's hatred of sin, which is fre-
quently conveyed in very forcible language, in
order to emphasize His abhorrence of evil, but to
commands ascribed directly to Him, which teach
cruelty and vengeance, feelings which an infin-
itely holy and merciful being cannot have;
commands which He could not give. We will
illustrate our views by a few parallel texts out of
many which might be selected, involving contra-
dictory moral commands and purposes to God.

Exodus V, I. And
afterwards Moses and
Aaron went in and told
Pharaoh, Thus saith the
Lord God of Israel.

Let my people go, that
they may hold a feast
imto me in the wilderness.

Exodus XX, 13. Thou
shalt not kill.

Exodus xxii, 21, 22.
Thou shalt neither vex
a stranger, nor oppress
him : for ye were strangers

Exodus X, 20. But the
Lord hardened Pharaoh's
heart, so that he would
not let the children of
Israel go.

Exodus xi, 10. And
Moses and Aaron did all
these wonders before
Pharaoh: and the Lord
hardened Pharaoh's

heart, so that he would
not let the children of
Israel go out of his land.

Deuteronomy ii, 34.
And we took all his
cities at that time, and
utterl)'- destroyed the
men, and the women and
the little ones, of every

Religious Miscellanies 221

in the land of Egypt.
Ye shall not afflict any
widow or fatherless
child.

Psalm xxxiii, 45. For
the word of the Lord is
right; and all His works
are done in truth. He
loveth righteousness and
judgment: the earth is
full of the goodness of the
Lord.

Psalm XXX vi, 7. How
excellent is Thy lov-
ing kindness, O God!
Therefore the children of
men put their trust under
the shadow of Thy wing.

James v, 11. The
Lord is very pitiful, and
of tender mercy. Mat-
thew V, 44-45. ^'^^ ^
say unto you, Love your
enemies, bless them that
curse you, do good to
them that hate you, and
pray for them which de-
spitefully use you, and

city, we left none to re-
main.

Deut. iii, 2. And the
Lord said unto me; . . .
and thou shall do tmto
him, as thou didst unto
Sihon, King of the Amor-
ites. Joshua vi, 21.
And they utterly de-
stroyed all that was in the
cityj both man and wo-
man, young and old,
with the edge of the
sword.

Joshua viii, r-2-24.
And the Lord said unto
Joshua . . . Thou shalt
do to Ai and her king as
thou didst unto Jericho
and her king. . . . And
all the Lsraelites returned
unto Ai and smote it
with the edge of the
sword. . . . And Joshua
burnt Ai, and made it a
heap forever, even a deso-
lation unto this day (v. 28).

ist Samuel xv, 2, 3.
Thus saith the Lord . . .
Now go and smite Ama-

222

Evolution of Religions

persecute you; that ye
may be the children of
your Father which is in
heaven; for He maketh
His sun to rise on the evil
and the good, and send-
eth rain on the just and
unjust.

ist Corinthians xiii, 13.
And now abideth faith,
hope, love, these three;
but the greatest of
these is love verse 8.
Love never faileth: but
whether there be prophe-
cies, they shall be done
away; whether there be
tongues, they shall cease;
whether there be knowl-
edge, it shall be done
away.

Ecclesiastes iii, 19-20.
For that which befall-
eth the sons of men be-
falleth beasts; even one
thing befalleth them; as
the one dieth, so dieth
the other; yea, they have
all one breath; so that a
man hath no preemi-
nence above a beast : for

lek and utterly destroy all
that they have, and spare
them not; but slay both
man and woman, infant
and suckling, ox and
sheep, camel and ass.

Psalm cix, 7, 8, 9, 10.
When he shall be
judged, let him be con-
demned: and let his
prayer become sin. Let
his days be few; and let
another take his office.
Let his children be father-
less, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be con-
tinually vagabonds and
beg: let them seek their
bread also out of their
desolate places.

ist Corinthians xv, 22.
For as in Adam all die,
even so in Christ shall all
be made alive.

Verse 53. For this
corruptible must put on
incorruption, and this
mortal shall put on im-
mortality. St. John V,
25. Verily, verily, I say

Religious Miscellanies 223

all is vanity. All go un- unto you, the hour is
to one place; all are of coming and now is, when
the dust, and all turn to the dead shall hear the
dust again. voice of the Son of God:

and they that hear shall

live.

These, with many other selections which might
be noted, prove that though most are, all the
teachings of the Bible are not inspired, because
some are contradictory, evil, and inconsistent
with the holy attributes of deity, love, mercy,
truth, and infinite compassion for the erring.
Other inconsistencies and incongruities may be
noted. After the brutal, adulterous crime of
David, King of Israel, with Bathsheba, the beau-
tiful wife of Uriah the Hittite, and the cowardly
betrayal to death by the adulterer: of her brave
husband while he was in David's army fighting
for his king and country, it is hardly conceivable
that God through His prophets ever afterwards
(though the king may have repented of that and
other crimes) should always, without qualification,
speak of David as " a man after God's own heart." *
Another dark crime of David was the cruel murder,
by the Gibeonites, by his participation, of the
seven innocent sons of Rizpah, and of Milcah,
who was once his wife. A most barbarous deed,
and Samuel, or whoever wrote the books, inti-

* Book of Kinsrs and Chronicles.

224 Evolution of Religions

mates that it was by God's orders.* The world
has been full of crime and bloodshed since the be-
ginning of time, and while God for inscrutable
reasons has permitted it, yet I will never believe
that He ordered evil to be done.

Even some of the great Nazarene's teachings
seem unreasonable and can hardly have been cor-
rectly reported or translated, imless intended for
conditions of society such as we imagine will be
in the millennial age. In fact, the universal love,
the total unselfishness, manifested in the Sermon
on the Moimt of Olives, though in entire harmony
with Jesus' nature and character, were hardly ex-
pected by Him to be the practical rules of life in
that age, but were intended for man's life in the
kingdom of heaven on earth, such as He expected
it to be in the future when men " shall beat their
swords into plowshares and their spears into
pruning hooks ; nation shall not lift up the sword
against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more," and "when the lion and the lamb shall
lie down together and a little child shall lead them."
Is it possible that for merely saying to his brother,
"Thou fool," one would be in danger of hell's fire
as the term is ordinarily imderstood? The time
may come when a man could meekly turn his
other cheek for another blow when struck by a
ruffian on one cheek without inviting plimder, per-
secution, and even death from all the wicked, as

1 Second Samuel, chap, xxi, verses i-io inclusive.

Religious Miscellanies 225

the world has always been, but he could hardly
safely to himself and family do so now. Or
when despoiled by a robber of his cloak, cheer-
fully give him his coat also! To so act, meekly
and humbly, one would have to love his neighbor,
not only as well, but better than himself, which
Jesus did not teach. He died for the salvation
of men. Others have given up their lives for the
common welfare of their kindred or cotmtrymen,
but we are not taught ordinarily to seek or invite
persecution and death. Some of these teachings
scarcely emanated from Jesus as broadly and un-
qualified as the evangelists wrote them.

It is said Christians are not expected to obey
those injunctions, and others similar to them,
literally, and that they are not to be understood
as literal requirements of duty in daily life, but
merely as strongly teaching and enforcing the great
duties of humility, moderation, charity, and pa-
tience under wrongs. Possibly, and Jesus no
doubt wished to enforce as He illustrated, in Him-
self, ordinarily, those virtues. But even He,
though usually meek and gentle, was not always
so. Sternly and fiercely He drove with cords the
money changers and gamblers out of the Temple,
and His terrible denunciation of the scribes,
priests, and Pharisees ' for their corruption, hypo-
crisy, selfishness, and bigotry, has never been
excelled in bitterness. The early Christians we

* Matthew, chap, xxiii.

226 Evolution of Religions

know in Jesus' time, and long afterwards from
the Evangelists, Book of Acts, and traditions,
were practically socialists or communists, and
had all things in common, and, of course, those
who lived in that way could and would be more
imselfish, kindly, and tolerant to each other than
if living in ordinary conditions of society. They
would naturally give to the teachings of the Master
upon all social subjects a wide latitude among
themselves, an interpretation not intended for the
world at large

Enthusiastic followers after His death most
likely exaggerated His teachings on some ques-
tions beyond their practical lines. He could
hardly have said broadly, and with literal exact-
ness, "that it was easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of heaven," for, if so, no man
of wealth could be saved. Its practical applica-
tion might suit the early Christians who had "all
things in common." "Neither was there any
among them that lacked, for as many as were
possessors of land or houses sold them and brought
the prices of the things that were sold, and laid
them down at the apostles' feet, and distribution
was made to every man according as he had
need." ^ What would Christ have said to myriads
of the Croesuses of the church militant since His
day? What would He have said to many of His

* Acts, chap, iv, verses 32, 34, 35.

Religious Miscellanies 227

vicegerents, pontiffs of Rome, who had in the
Aliddle Ages greater incomes than many sovereigns
of Europe, and some of whom left immense wealth,
mostly wrung from the poor laity, to their rela-
tives, and in a few instances even to their illegiti-
mate children ? Or to the archbishops and bishops
of the Church of England of to-day, who have sal-
aries of fifty thousand dollars and twenty-five thou-
sand dollars annually, who live in Episcopal pal-
aces, and are waited upon and served by liveried
attendants? Jesus' teachings upon social matters
were evidently for a future time, or conditions of the
world, when the " knowledge of God should cover
the earth as the waters cover the seas; " when all
men should live up to the doctrine of the Golden
Rule, when all should be in truth brothers and
sisters, and "when none should harm or annoy
others in all God's holy mountain."

Whenever and wherever the unlimited doctrines
of non-resistance and of people enjoying all things
in common, excepting upon a small scale, have
been even partially put into practice in religious,
socialistic, or communistic experiments, the re-
sults have been unfortunate, resulting neither in
public nor private good. Besides, such rules of life
literally imderstood are at variance with other
teachings of the Bible. Many of the good men of
old, patriarchs and kings, who were high in God's
favor were very rich. Some of them are com-
mended by Jesus.

228 Evolution of Religions

In the Book of Proverbs, we are enjoined most
forcibly to resist the tyrannical, wicked, and ex-
tortionate, and taught as among our highest duties
to be industrious, frugal, and economical, in order
that we may provide for our families in comfort
and lay up a competency for old age. St. Paul
says that, " He who provides not for his own, and
especially for those of his own household, is worse
than an infidel." ^

In the medieval ages the grasping clergy dwelt
much in their sermons upon the futility of the rich
endeavoring to get to heaven, and thousands of the
wealthy kings, princes, barons, and merchants
were only absolved upon their dying beds upon
making bequests of their lands and moneys to
build magnificent cathedrals and churches and
endow monastic institutions, or provide rich in-
comes for lordly ecclesiastics.

The Bible contains the grandest religion and
much of the most important and ancient history
of any book in the world. It was compiled from
the writings of great prophets, statesmen, warriors,
poets, priests, and philosophers, " holy men of old,"
and yet some of them entertained very singular
and diverse opinions on many important subjects.^
Ecclesiastes, chaps, ii and iii, teaches the doc-
trines of Diogenes and the Stoics, and annihilation
after death. This was the tenet of the Sadducees.

* Timothy, chap, v, verse 8.
' Ecclesiastes, chaps, ii and iii.

Religious Miscellanies 229

A later chapter, v,- teaches the Epicurean philo-
sophy. Jesus taught always free agency. Paul
taught fatalism, election, predestination. ' ' Nay
but, O man, who art thou that repliest against
God? Shall the thing formed say to Him who
formed it. Why hast thou made me thus ? Hath
not the potter power over the clay of the same
lump to make one vessel unto honor and another
unto dishonor? " ^

The Old Testament nowhere in its pages, ex-
cepting by remote inference, in about the same
terms as the Analects of Confucius, cheers us with
the hope of immortality and eternal happiness,
while the New Testament on almost every page is
full of it. Jesus Christ really was the first prophet
who "brought life and immortality to light" in
Israel, though the Essenes and Pharisees be-
lieved in it in a way before His time. The Bible
is a many-sided book, and those inconsistent doc-
trines, though set forth amidst other sublime
ethics, cannot all be inspired, whatever creeds and
ecclesiastics and councils of the Church may teach.
Hence only the absolute truths as to God and His
attributes (as ass-umed in the beginning of this
book) of eternal life and eternal ethics are from
God. But much of it is of man and from man
only, and what is of man is sometimes inconsistent
and erring, as all human teachings are liable to be,

* Ecclesiastes, chap. v.

' Romans, chap. ix. verses 20-21.

230 Evolution of Religions

The Bible purports to come from God and be a rev-
elation of His will to mankind, and as such, coming
through man only, it naturally challenges the
most rigorous criticism and investigation of its
claims. Explicitly, often in its pages, it invites all
to " search the Scriptures and hold fast to all that
is good," and hence by implication to reject any-
thing in it that may be found inconsistent with
its great cardinal truths. Its messages are predi-
cated for eternity as well as for time, and those
really from God, all wise and perfect, must all be
consistent with each other, and whatsoever is not
so consistent we have a right to pronounce of
mortal inspiration only.

What Jesus taught of social duties in His ser-
mon on the mountain was fully as beautifully and
more comprehensively expressed by the apostle
Paul when he said : " If I speak with the tongues of
men and of angels, but have not ove, I am become
(as) sounding brass (and) a clanging cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all
faith, so as to be able to remove moimtains, but
have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all
my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body
to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me
nothing. Love suffereth long and is kind; love
envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed
up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not
its own, is not easily provoked ; taketh not account

Religious Miscellanies 231

of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but re-
joiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believ-
eth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things. Love never faileth, but whether there be
prophecies, they shall be done away; whether
there be tongues, they shall cease ; " whether there
be knowledge, it shall be done away.* "Finally,
brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever
things are honorable, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if
there be any virtue and if there be any praise,
think on these things."^

* First Corinthians, chap, xiii, verses i to 8 inclusive.
' Philippians, chap, iv, verse 8.

CHAPTER XII

SECOND ADVENTISTS AND CONNECTION OF
SECRET ORDERS WITH THE SUPER-
NATURAL IN RELIGIONS

NEARLY all of the human race, and espe-
cially of the uneducated, love mystery and
the marvelous, and more readily believe stories
tinctured with such fascinations than honest,
prosaic, logical truths. Poetic fictions are wel-
comed when sober history is often discarded.
The Book of Daniel and the Book of Revela-
tion, the first a historical, prophetic fiction,
written by an imknown author, after the death
of Alexander the Great, when his great empire
was partitioned up among his four generals,
Antipater, Seleucus, Ptolemy, and Antigonus,
and the other merely ecstatic religious dreams
of the holy enthusiast St. John, during his banish-
ment to the lone Isle of Patmos in the eastern
Mediterranean, have afforded the bases of a
thousand predictions by fanatics, generally com-
bined from both those books, and supported
often by weary mazes of learned arithmetical,
mathematical, and astronomical calculations, of
the near approach of the end of the world and the

232

Second Adventists 233

judgment day in each of the centuries since the
crucifixion of Christ. It was believed by His
disciples that those events would occur not
many years after His ascension.^

Even Grecian sibylline oracles and astrologi-
cal star combinations and calculations, in the
early centuries of Christianity, used to play a
part in such predictions. The disciples of Christ,
as we know from the Gospels, Revelation, and
Epistles, and from traditions and fragments of
history, believed that day was imminent. Soon
after the departure of the Savior from earth, and
probably in the lifetime of some of the Apostles,
His second advent was expected and frequently
afterwards for centuries. In Matthew xxiv, 29-
51, Mark xiii, 6-37, Luke xxi, 25-36, the speedy
coming of that day was undoubtedly heralded.
About the year 1000 a.d., the whole Christian
world was convulsed with terror on accoimt of
predictions that the end of all things terrestrial
and the second coming of Jesus was at hand,
accompanied as those predictions were by irre-
fragable demonstrations of arithmetical proofs,
from prophecies, from the books of Daniel and
Revelation, mainly based upon the chaining of
Satan, and the casting of the great arch-enemy
of man into the bottomless pit.^

In my time, and I remember exceedingly

* Matthew, ch. xxiv.

' Revelation, ch. xx, vs. 1-3.

234 Evolution of Religions

well, the almost universal consternation and
alarm which the predictions of Rev. Wm. Miller,
an Adventist, formerly a Baptist minister, pro-
duced all over the United States. He pro-
claimed that the end of the world and final
judgment would surely come on April 19, 1843.
It was wonderful. Thousands of people became
insane, brooding over the near coming of the
dreadful day. Many committed suicide. Singu-
lar as it may seem, nearly all those who did so
were professed Christians who naturally ought
to have rejoiced at the prospect of meeting
their Savior.

I was young, but was not much perturbed,
and wondered why good people should go insane,
or what suicides would gain or evade, even if
the great judgment and conflagration of the
earth, which I doubted much, were near at hand.
A wonderful comet appearing in the south-
western heavens early in March of that spring
and swiftly looming up from the horizon and
moving rapidly imtil its nucleus was near the
zenith, and its dark, sword-like tail far down
in the sky, added greatly to the general alarm;
certainly presaging, as many believed, the com-
ing dread catastrophe, and bringing sure con-
firmation to the predictions. All the church
services for many months previously were crowded,
and very numerous conversions occurred. Many
thousands of people in various parts of the coun-

Second Adventists 235

try, principally in the middle States of New
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia,
and Tennessee, abandoned farms, shops, and
offices and quit business in order to get ready
for the coming of the Lord. ]\Iany families
abandoned their homes for weeks before the
predicted time, and went into mountain hills
and caves. Thousands of people near Cleveland,
Ohio, and Buffalo, New York, assembled on the
lake shores on the morning of the supposed last
day, dressed in ascension garments, ready to
meet their Lord in the air. But the day passed
and nothing happened. IMiller, it was said,
found that he had made a mistake in his calcu-
lations, revised them, and fixed upon another
day in the early ensuing summer. But the
great day had passed. The prophet had lost his
prestige, and but little attention was paid to his
revised calculations or prophecies. It was said
that believing his interpretation of prophecies
and calculations therefrom were correct, he lost
faith in the Bible and became a skeptic.

Oh! the folly and credulity of human beings!
What absurdities in the name of religion will they
not believe! In what weird and mystical rites,
doctrines, secret orders, monastic legends, super-
natural delusions, through faith will they not
imite and adopt! The world, at least the Chris-
tian world, is even now full of Second Advent-
ists' trashy books and wild millennial predictions.

236 Evolution of Religions

Many times during the past nineteen hundred
years has it been disturbed and frequently almost
convulsed by such delusions. After the failure
of each successive prediction, the prophets were
discarded and discounted only to make room for
new ones in each century, to appear with a new
installment of "end of the world" prophecies,
and those in turn, in a few years, to be again
dishonored and forgotten. So in all probability
the future will produce more such prophets, to
be followed and believed in by other idiots for a
time.

The latest collapse of such schemes and schem-
ers, and perhaps of brazen religious humbuggery,
was the "heaven" of a so-called messiah and son
of God, whose human name is Swinefurth, lately
existing for a dozen or more years (a short time
ago disrupted and its inmates scattered) at Rock-
ford, Illinois. But enough of Adventists. So,
despite them and their prophecies, springtime and
summer, autumn and winter, seedtime and
harvest, which the good God gives us, will doubt-
less continue in their regular succession and
courses; generation after generation of human
beings be bom, love, live, and die, and all the
turmoils and vanities of men go on, as in the past,
through countless ages, imtil the earth may grow
old and worn out, and become a lifeless planet,
only filled with sepulchers, with none to weep
over departed friends. Whether it will become

Second Adventists 237

such a dead world as the moon is now supposed,
by scientists, to be, or else, through the ceaseless
influences of insufficiently counterbalanced cen-
tripetal attraction, may in its lessening orbit
gradually swing too closely to the sim and be
absorbed by gravitation in its limitless ocean of
electric fires, the great God only knows.

History teaches that, when any great religious
movement has become successfully developed,
its priestly hierarchy, influenced partly by reli-
gious enthusiasm, and largely through love of
power, place, and wealth, have used all manner
of agencies and influences to dominate the minds
of men, and permanently establish their control
of the people, ostensibly for religious purposes,
but really for the permanence of their power.
Of course, many of the clergy of all religions are
good, honest men. The more ignorant men are,
the greater usually is their veneration for the
ministers of religion and belief in their superior
sanctity. Hence the power of the priesthood is
the more easily retained, and naturally the
revenues and donations obtained from the laity
for salaries, churches, endowments of bishoprics,
parochial homes, and manifold other religious
purposes, become larger. For centuries during
the Middle Ages, nearly one half of the property
in Europe, especially landed estates, had become
absorbed by, and was owned or under the con-
trol of, religious and monastic orders, bishops

238 Evolution of Religions

and other clergy of the Catholic Church, And
in order, more completely to hold and retain
their control over the popular mind, the design-
ing and artful ecclesiastics of all religions, anciently
established secret conclaves or orders, in which
the initiates were taught mystic and super-
natural legends of the faith, and bound by many
rites and obligations, sometimes of a fearful
character, to believe in and be faithful to the
creed and hierarchy. Ostensibly those secret
orders may not have been publicly announced
as established for such purposes, but usually
their organization was so designed by the domi-
nant hierarchy and under its control. Such
orders were always more or less groimded upon
superstition and supematuralism.

Such societies existed throughout India from
very ancient times as adjimcts and supporters
of Brahmanism, generally composed of the priestly
and aristocratic castes exclusively. In China
after Confucianism became the dominant religion,
such secret orders soon sprung up as its cham-
pions. Buddhism developed very many of them,
especially in the moimtains of Thibet, which
were full of secret orders of monastics, mostly
under the control of the Grand Lama. Egypt
under its ancient Osirian priesthood had many
fanatical secret orders, especially recruited from
their ranks, whose authority was greater even
than the Pharaohs, and whose edicts of secret

Second Adventists 239

imprisonment or death, fulminated against heretics
and enemies of the holy hierarchy, spread terror
everywhere, and were mercilessly enforced. Gre-
cian, Roman, and Scandinavian mythologies had
such secret, oath-bound orders and lodges among
men and even women. The Eleusinian and Diony-
sian mysteries of Greece and the priests and priest-
esses of the Delphic oracles of Apollo, the order
of Vestal Virgins of Rome, and the secret con-
claves of Druid and Scandinavian priests, of Thor
and Odin, into whose mysteries only the custo-
dians of their holy books, incantations, and rites,
and their devoted servants, were admitted, had
absolute power over the people. Such, too, were
the ancient Jewish orders of the Nazirites, Recha-
bites, Essenes, and also, most probably, the Phar-
isees. Mohammedan countries also have their
secret orders in the dervishes, who are intensely
fanatical recluses.

After the adoption and patronage of Christian-
ity by the Roman emperors, and especially during
the Dark and Middle Ages, secret religious orders
rapidly grew up. Out of them the crusades devel-
oped, and from the crusaders grew up the relig-
ious, military, political secret orders of the Knights
of the Temple, or Knights Templars, Knights of St.
John of Jerusalem, of Malta, of the Red Cross, and
Knights Hospitallers. After the religious mania,
in which the wars of the crusades were bom, had
worn itself out, and Europe grew tired of them.

240 Evolution of Religions

those orders of knighthood, in the years of peace,
grown rich, ambitious, and dangerous, as secret
political associations united with their semi-relig-
ious character, under the absolute control of their
grand masters, became a menace to the govern-
ments of Europe. They were finally crushed out
by those governments, their franchises and priv-
ileges revoked, and their property, which had
become immense, as corporate bodies, was tmi-
versally confiscated. Even the Roman See, which
in the outset encouraged and helped build them up
on account of their pride, arrogance, and wealth,
and occasional dominance over the clergy, finally
arrayed itself with the monarchs of Europe in
antagonism to those orders, and they ceased to
exist. Jacques de Molay, who was burned alive
in France in 1314 for rebellion, was the last grand
master of the ]\Iilitary Templars.

Several centuries ago, when the secret order of
Free Masonry, originally organized as guilds or
lodges of practical masons and architects, had
become prominent and influential, as a factor
in society, in some countries of Europe, and
particularly in England and her colonies, those
old orders of knighthood were theoretically
revivified, with nothing, however, similar to the
originals, excepting their ancient traditions and
forms, and were adopted and incorporated into
Masonry, as higher lodges and degrees of that
order, as a quasi-military branch of it, to which

Second Adventists 241

order, however, the Knights owe allegiance and
must belong as members in ftill concord and
affiliation. The ancient position and prestige of
the orders of knighthood, as sons and defenders
of the Papacy, has ceased, and the secret orders
of monks or brothers of Augustines, Franciscans,
Benedictines, Dominicans, and Jesuits, and other
affiliated societies organized during the Middle
Ages, and mainly after the overthrow and dis-
persion of the militant orders of knighthood,
for the promotion, perpetuity, and defense of
Catholicism, by their zealous founders, have
taken the place of those ancient orders as sons
of the Church. Among the Protestant reformers
of Europe, during the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries, many secret religious
and religio-political orders grew up, which in
the terrible religious wars and controversies
of those times generally affiliated with Free
Masonry,

Scotland, imder the bigotry of Calvinism,
became in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies a very hotbed, so to speak, of religious
orders and associations, of which the Covenant-
ers and all the Scottish, Masonic Trinitarian
Lodges and Consistories were the outgrowth.
They had no especial basis, excepting popular
legends and intense devotion to orthodox Chris-
tianity. The Presbyterian Covenanters imited
for self-defense and religious protection against

242 Evolution of Religions

both Catholicism and the English Episcopacy.
Masonry, as a religious and social order, developed
gradually into present forms and organizations
mainly during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The religious tenets and traditions of
the order in the Blue Lodges and Chapters are
Hebraic, but in the Commanderies and Consis-
tories only Protestant doctrines and traditions
are taught and symbolized, and hence Masonry
as an order has always been antagonized by the
Roman hierarchy. Nominally now, the order
is non-sectarian, and merely speculative Masonry,
and anyone who professes belief in the existence
of God, Christian, Jew, or Mohammedan, or
follower of any other religion, can be affiliated.

Alasonry has always been an auxiliary of the
Bible, and especially in maintaining belief in its
supernatural legends. In the Blue Lodge Degrees,
the ceremonies, obligations, lectures, and legen-
dary teachings are entirely based upon and
connected with the building of the First or Solo-
mon's Temple, and the Royal Chapter Degrees
with the building of the Second, or Zerubbabel's
Temple, and those legends, with sundry extraor-
dinary incidents, are taught as verities in the
several degrees, although really they are out-
side of and additional to Bible narratives and
without any biblical corroboration whatever
and really purely fabulous. The most of the
religious and historical teachings in the Blue

Second Adventists 243

Lodge and Chapter Degrees are virtually the
same as taught in the old Scriptures, whilst the
Commandery and Consistorial or Scottish Rite
Degrees, as they are commonly called, have
mainly to do with legends of the crusaders and
Christian doctrines, only excepting in the Red
Cross Degree, which is based upon the Book of
Ezra. Whatever the order may have been two
or three centuries ago, when speculative Masonry
was substituted for practical and operative
Masonry, it has been, since then and is now,
mainly a social, fraternal, and benevolent
institution.

The teachings of secret orders, with their
mystic rites and obligations, strongly impressed
upon the mind, are generally imbibed and believed
without questioning, especially by the young
and inexperienced, as those first becoming Masons
generally are. The order has thus unquestion-
ably exercised a great influence with its member-
ship in maintaining beHef in Jewish and Christian
history and miracles, though it furnishes no
evidence whatever of their authenticity. In
fact, the legends of Masonry generally are not
in the Bible, and are simply the Cabbala of the
order, and are usually received and believed by
most Masons as supposedly having been trans-
mitted down from antiquity. However, many
intelligent Masons do not believe in those legends.
As a matter of fact, none of the legends or rites of

244 Evolution of Religions

Masonry have any foundation or authority what-
ever, outside of biblical story, and hence can add
no confirmation whatever to its history, miracles,
or prophecies. Whatever of actual Hebrew his-
tory there is in Masonic rituals or lectures, is
derived from the Bible. So we affirm that no
"Brother of the Mystic Tie," even after he has
attained to the thirty-third and highest degree
in Masonry, by virtue of his eminence and pro-
ficiency therein, knows really anything more of
the work of building Solomon's or Zerubbabel's
Temple, of Hiram, king of Tyre, of Hiram Abiff,
of the ineffable name of God, or of the miracles
of sacred writ, or of the early days of Christianity,
than is foiind in biblical pages and in Josephus*
works and the Jewish Talmud, and consequently
no more than may be known by any Bible reader
or reader of Jewish history.

Similar comments will apply to the simulated
Moslem Annex of Masonry, the modem order of
the Mystic Shrine, which in recent years has been
ingrafted on Masonry by some enterprising
inventor of secret novelties. The ritual and
work of this order are mainly made up of fictitious
Mohammedan legends, aphorisms from the Koran,
and fables of the deserts of Arabia and Egypt,
set off with pantomimic plays of traveling on
camels over their sands and mountains, merely
child's play, social and amusing, but improfit-
able.

Second Adventists 245

We write as a Mason and lover of the order,
knowing all about it. It is a great social and
benevolent institution, and its members generally
are men of honor and integrity. In its social
and benevolent features and high standard of
moral duties, if lived up to. Masonry is peerless
among the many secret orders ; but practically, the
most intelligent members of the fraternity regard
the rites and legends of the order, as one of the
most prominent and brightest Masons of the
United States has well said, "as but the relics of
a past age, and really continued more to preserve
the ostensible antiquity of the order rather than
to bind our consciences." We desire to empha-
size, — and that is mainly the object of this short
digression about secret societies whose work and
rituals are supposed to be based upon, and con-
firmatory of, biblical history, — that neither does
Masonry, nor any other of the secret religious
orders or brotherhoods of the past fifteen hundred
years in the Christian world, add to or furnish
any contemporaneous, cumulative, or corrobora-
tive testimony to Bible inspiration or Bible
miracles. The other many secret orders of our
day are mainly organized for life insurance, or
merely benevolent and social purposes, excepting
the Catholic brotherhoods, and it is only because
of the supposed corroborative testimony of
Masonry to Bible history and miracles, of which
it really affords none whatever, that anything

246 Evolution of Religions

has been said here of the order. Its legends have
been taken from the Bible partly, and are partly
fictions. So, whatever of history it teaches, is
not original. Of course, the Templar and Con-
sistorial Degrees have some modem history.

CHAPTER XIII

SATAN

WE purpose now to consider more fully than
the casual references hereinbefore made to
the subject, the question of the existence of an
evil deity called in the various bibles of the world
the Devil, Satan, ApoUyon, Lucifer, Belial, Ahri-
man, Angro-Mainyus, Sheitan, Eblis, Set, Typhon,
and many other names; also the questions of
original sin and eternal punishment, tenets
intimately connected with belief in the existence
and power of the evil being. Considerable has
already been written in these pages upon these
subjects, but we propose more fully to discuss
them, and endeavor to ascertain the truth. Does
such a being as Satan exist ? If so, does he have
the powers usually attributed to him? Are we
accoimtable for Adam and Eve's sin, commonly
called original sin, somehow imputed to each one
of their descendants as personal guilt, by orthodox
Christianity ? Will there be future eternal punish-
ment, infinite punishment for finite sins, original,
as well as actual sins, for all who do not come
under the benefit of Christ's supposed atone-
ment? These are momentous questions. As we

247

c

248 Evolution of Religions

are but finite creatures, our acts and thoughts,
good or evil, can only be finite. Excepting what
is said of the serpent in Eden, commonly assumed
by biblical commentators to have been Satan in
disguise, and in two or three other brief references
to him by name only elsewhere, rather inciden-
tally,' nothing more is said of Satan in the volumi-
nous pages of the Old Testament. We have, as
has been said already, no reason to suppose that
the Hebrews believed generally in such a being,
f until after they became acquainted with the
religion of Zoroaster during the captivity in
Babylon and Persia, nor that they had any
idea of a future atonement to be made for sins.
As Zoroastrianism, then intermixed with Chal-
dean Magiism, was at that time the tmiversal
religion of those countries, of course the exiled
Jews came into contact with it during their long
residence there. Moreover, we know they did,
from much that is said in the books of Daniel,
Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ezekiel, and in most
of the Apocryphal books. During the exile, or
subsequently, soon after the restoration, these
books, as well as the books of the Old Testa-
ment in which allusions to Satan, eo-nominee, are
foimd, viz.. Chronicles, Psalms, and Job, were
written or compiled, and the redaction of the
Elohist, Jehovist, Priestley, and Ephraimitic old

* I Chron. ch. xxi, v. i ; Job ch. iv, v. 2 ; ch. ii, v. i ; Psalms,
ch. xix, V. 6.

Satan 249

Bible versions, or of such fragments as then
existed, were then made by Ezra, Nehemiah, and
probably other Jewish scholars assisting them.
In Persia and Chaldea the exiled Jews learned from
the priests and IMagi about Angro-Mainyus, the evil
one, and through the intermingling of the Magian
worship with the Persian imbibed, partly, the cor-
rupted Zoroastrianism, which had been changed to
teach of Satan, from an originally supposed de-
pendency upon God, to being co-existing and co-
eternal with Him, and contesting for supremacy
with Him on earth and over the human race.
Magiism, or corrupted Zoroastrianism, also taught
that the evil one caused noxious plants and weeds
to grow, created dangerous beasts, poisonous ser-
pents and vermin, originated diseases and pes-
tilence, and was always seducing men into sin and
maintaining with Ormuzd a perpetual conflict for
sovereignty on earth.

These ideas, in perhaps a modified form, were,
dining the exile, first indoctrinated into the
Jewish theology, as well as the Zoroastrian belief
in the resurrection of the dead, the immortality
of the soul and the future judgment, which
Christianity directly through Jesus, and remotely
through the Pharisees and Essenes, Jewish sects
of His day, inherits from that more ancient religion.
If these doctrines were taught at all by Moses and
the prophets, they were very ambiguously and
dimly defined. To the Persian religion, the

250 Evolution of Religions

sect of Pharisees (derived from the Persian name,
Parsi, or Parsis) , as well as the sect of the Essenes,
undoubtedly owed their origin. But the power-
ful sect of the Sadducees, who were really the
aristocracy and literati of the Jews, "who say
that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor
spirit," * adhered strictly to the ancient Torah.
Jesus taught the doctrines of the Pharisees, and
yet they were His bitterest enemies, mainly
probably on account of His denunciations of
their pride, arrogance, and veniality. Through
the reformed Judaism of the Pharisees, Satan
became also a prominent factor in the Christian
dispensation, in its evolution from the old dis-
pensation or out of it. During the terrible perse-
cution of the Christians for two and a half centuries
after Christ by the Roman emperors, and in the
centuries afterwards, through all the dark ages
of superstition, ignorance, and fanaticism, the
whole world was supposed to be literally overrun
by the devil and his angels, who were in league
with the wicked heathens to crush out Christian-
ity. Most Christians, in common with the Zoro-
astrians or Parsees, Hindoos, Mohammedans,
and Mormons, yet believe in such a being, and
that he is incessantly and everywhere, omniscient
and omnipresent, with or without God's permis-
sion, they do not exactly know, engaged with
his angels of darkness in the nefarious work of

* Acts, ch. xxiii, v. 8.

Satan 251

seducing human beings of all faiths and of no
faith, from the paths of goodness and virtue, and
alluring them into sin and wickedness, — the
devil apparently more than holding his own in the
great conflict with the Almighty.

Now does such a being exist? Did he ever
exist ? Are Dante's " Inferno " and Milton's " Para-
dise Lost" horrible realities? Is Satan a creature
of God, as Christians and Moslems generally
believe, or is he self -existent, eternal, and inde-
pendent of God, as the followers of Zoroaster
taught and perhaps teach yet? If the latter
theory is correct, then the Zoroastrian doctrine,
granting the premises of Satan's independence
and self -existence, is at least logical, and the
endless conflict between God and Satan, a neces-
sary, reasonable, and natural sequence. But ortho-
dox Christians believe, with all other Christians,
that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-
present, and infinite in wisdom and goodness,
and they further believe, which Unitarians and
Universalists do not, that Satan was in the be-
ginning created by God and was once one of the
powers of Heaven, highest of angels and arch-
angels, and that afterwards by rebellion against
his Creator, long before the creation of man,
he fell from his high estate and was, with myriads
of his followers, rebel angels, cast out of the
celestial paradise into a bottomless abyss called
hell, away beyond the boundaries of organized

252 Evolution of Religions

creation. And they believe that Satan and his
followers have ever since been and ever will be,
through all eternity, utterly wicked and rebellious,
ever warring against God and hating man, and
yet at their will and pleasure, permitted by the
Almighty to come to earth out of their infernal
home, and to ever work by every phase of temp-
tation and blandishment, sometimes even in the
guise of "servants of God and ministers of light,"
which He permits them to assume, the more suc-
cessfully to carry on their work of deception and
villainy, to seduce and lead astray the children
of men into sin and resulting misery here and
eternal ruin and suffering hereafter.

If such is Satan and his mission, and the work
of his angels by the permission of God, what is
the stem, inevitable logic of such a doctrine?
Why does God, the Almighty, with infinite know-
ledge of Satan's work and purposes, and infinite
power to prevent, permit him and his fellow-
demons to exist, or at least to continue such
hellish work year after year, from age to age?
He knew from the beginning what Satan would
do if permitted, for God is omniscient. He
knew what Satan would accomplish when He
permitted him to enter Eden and tempt Adam
and Eve to sin and death. To deny it is to deny
God's omniscience. To doubt God's power to
prevent Satan from entering Eden or accom-
plishing his devilish purpose there, is to doubt

Satan 253

God's omnipotence. Now, according to the ortho-
dox creed, in the forum of reason, is not the
Almighty ultimately responsible for Satan's work?
If the premises of the orthodox theory are true,
then logically there can be no other sane con-
clusion, seemingly irreverent as this conclusion
may be. The old adage, " Facit per alium, jacit
per se" is forever true, and must be as applicable
to Deity as to man. The stem logic of the con-
clusion cannot be avoided or evaded by saying
that it is irreverent (truth can never be irrever-
ent) or that God is not governed by the same
moral laws as men, for in the Bible God appeals
to men to judge Him by the same moral code He
gave to man.

Nor can the conclusion be avoided by the
stereotyped argument that Adam and Eve
were made free agents to choose between good
and evil, for if so they were equally free and good
before Satan came into the Garden of Eden and
would have continued good, so far as the context
of the story shows, indefinitely, had he been kept
out. But besides, the story shows they were not
free agents, because their moral powers had not
been tested, nor did they know how to use them
and protect themselves from evil, for they did
not know any moral distinctions, or any difference
between right and wrong, and hence could not
have any discrimination of the two ways, or any
power of resistance of evil. Much less have

254 Evolution of Religions

their posterity such power with their fallen natures
and inherited tendencies and traits of evil. None
of us are free agents absolutely, nor were Adam
and Eve. They were forbidden to eat of the
fruit of the tree which would have given them
knowledge of and enabled them to discrimraate
between good and evil, and it seemed to be the
desire of the Almighty to keep from them such
knowledge. Even had they known the difference
between good and evil, the influences and capaci-
ties for and against, to make them free agents,
or keep them such, should have been entirely
iinder their control, based upon full knowledge
of the blessings resulting from good and the
curses resulting from evil deeds. With know-
ledge of inevitable results, the sin resulting in
their case from their disobedience, or in case of
any of their children, imder temptation of pas-
sion and appetites only, might easily have been
avoided and resisted had not in Adam and Eve's
case, overmastering Satanic influences, and in
the case of their descendants, overmastering
hereditary and Satanic influences, also been
superadded.

Innocent, artless, guileless, ignorant Adam
and Eve, in the toils and temptations of Satan,
had no free agency whatever. It is simply a
mockery to talk of it, according to the environ-
ments of the legend. The foil of abused free
agency, set up by bigoted ecclesiastics and scho-

Satan 255

lastics as an apology or excuse or justifica-
tion of the awful doom, which otherwise would not
have occurred, of death and eternal punish-
ment, incurred by Adam and Eve for themselves
and in all their posterity for eating the forbidden
fruit, is the sheerest sophistry and hypocrisy.
Satanic influences have confessedly in all the
teachings of the believers in orthodoxy and
the evil one, been the source and cause of all sin
and evil, and have overwhelmed all the good in
man which otherwise free agency, real free agency,
under normal good impulses and normal con-
sciences, might have enabled him successfully to
develop. In other words, surrounded with per-
petual Satanic temptations to sin, with the
hereditary propensities of men since the fall,
cooperating with Satan into abetting and fan-
ning into ungovernable flames, the natural fires of
appetities and passions, there has been no free
agency of man since the fall, and for the reasons
already stated, there was certainly none before,
if Eden is a fact. Free agency means equally
balanced powers, mental and moral, equal oppor-
tunities and influences for good and evil, ample
natural and spiritual powers to choose the good
and eschew the evil, with reason, to enable us to
control in turning the scale in favor of good.
But in the orthodox cult of a world full of hellish
influences, ever working with the passions of
men assisted by hereditary natural depravity,

256 Evolution of Religions

to lead them into evil; free agency is a wholly
delusive theory, a promise of hope and freedom
to man as illusory and deceptive as fabled

" Dead Sea fruits that tempt the eye,
But turn to ashes on the Ups."

Our human theater of mental vision is very
limited, it is true. We cannot fathom the plans
and purposes of the Infinite. Many argue that
the orthodox theory of God's moral government,
though apparently illogical and unjust, may in
His universal economy be right and best. But
we have only our moral perceptions and our
intellects, based upon God's moral laws in the
Bible and in nature, to guide us in the paths of
reason, justice, and truth, and from such lights
which He has given us, the orthodox ideas of
Satan and his mission and work are wrong and
derogatory to God. Unless our ideas of His
sovereignty, justice, and mercy are wholly wrong,
and that He governs upon moral lines of which
we have no conception and which are antithetic
to the ethics of the Bible, the omnipotent, holy,
and all wise Sovereign of the universe could not
and would not permit such a fiend as Satan to
exist and carry on with impunity his nefarious
work. To permit him to do so would be a sur-
render or abandonment of every one of His holy
attributes, and hence, ex vi termini, the Satanic

Satan 257

theory of orthodoxy with all its horrible sequences
of earthly sin and eternal punishment is utterly
illogical and false. " God sitteth on the circle of
the universe." He is ever on its throne and
holds the helm of its government, and He cannot
and does not permit such an evil being, one of
His creation, to thwart all His purposes of infinite
love. Orthodoxy dethrones God, and Satan's
realm in its creed, is an "Imperium in imperio."
Incredible ! He is represented in the Apocalypse
of Revelation as a roaring lion, going about in
his mission and with his minions of evil, unchecked
everywhere, on earth at all times, vested with
powers of omniscience and omnipresence, every-
where present at the same time, knowing all the
thoughts, passions, and doings of all men, and
continually tempting all to sin and rebellion
against God.

Under such overmastering influences, man's
boasted free agency seems only freedom to sin.
What wonder ancient Zoroastrians, believing Satan
possessed such powers, supposed him to be a
deity, contesting with God, and really having
much the greater influence with men and having
most followers? We believe the Satanic ascrip-
tions in the New Testament, as well as the few
found in the Old, to be mostly allegorical, and,
with the descriptions of the dark world of sheol,
hades, or hell, to be fanciful colorings of the
original text; in many instances perverted to

258 Evolution of Religions

change the idea of the Greek world of departed
spirits to correspond with the morbid delusions
and fanatical creeds of the bigots of the Dark
Ages, and all of them, however, inwrought in the
Scriptures, to be entirely human ideas and
beliefs, not of God, but bom of the superstitions
and darkness of those ages and totally imworthy
of credence now. Whether allegories, perversions
of the original teachings, or merely superstitious
fancies, or however they got into the Scrip-
tures, those teachings impeach God's wisdom,
mercy, and justice, and limit His sovereignty, and
are, therefore, imtrue.

To read the old creeds, the Westminster Con-
fession of Faith, and the works of Calvinistic
theologians, portraying the powers of Satan and
the unutterable horrors of hell, the impression is
conveyed that we must believe in such tenets as
essentials to salvation. Must we really believe
that God is dethroned in His moral government
by Satan, and believe in the eternal punishment
of all the myriads of men whom God has, accord-
ing to orthodoxy, permitted Satan to deceive and
ruin forever? Only a few of those numbered
among the elect, being enabled by special grace
to persevere and get to heaven? The teach-
ings of some of the orthodox theologians of a
hundred years ago seem almost incredible.

Rev. Edwards in one of his sermons, inter alia,
says:

Satan 259

" The view of the misery of the damned will double
the ardor of the love and gratitude of the saints in
heaven."

In the thirteenth of his published sermons he
says:

"When the redeemed shall see how miserable
others of their fellow creatures are ; when they shall
see the smoke of their torments in hell, and the
raging flames of their burnings, and shall hear their
cries and shrieks, and shall consider that they, in
the meantime, are in the most blissful state, and
shall surely be in it to all eternity, as the lost shall
be in hell, how they will rejoice! How joyfully
they shall sing to God and to the Lamb when they
shall see this!"

And if some of their fellow immortals thus suffer-
ing, are father, mother, son and daughter, brother,
sister, and others, once near and dear on earth,
the redeemed, according to Dr. Edwards, would
rejoice in Paradise, and their happiness be abso-
lutely enhanced by the knowledge that those
most dearly loved on earth and closest in the
ties of blood and kindred, were suffering ever-
lasting torments, and from that knowledge
realizing the amazing grace which, all immerited,
had elected the saved to enjoy endless bliss.

We doubt if even the devil could be joyous
over such ineffable horrors! How can anyone
have such conception of the inexorable vengeance
of a being who says in the Good Book "that He is

26o Evolution of Religions

our Father," that all people are His children; that
He is love itself and infinite in mercy; that as in
Adam all died, so in Christ shall all Hve" ? Thank
God the evolutions of religion are bursting the
shackles of such teachings and are ushering in the
dawn of a brighter day. The world is awaken-
ing to the light. Few Christians, even of the
orthodox, believe in the hell of a century ago.
The horrible portraitures such as we heard in our
youths from the pulpits of the world of the
damned and its awful eternal horrors, are never
preached now and would depopulate the churches
if again revived. The hell of the past is in
fact absolutely eliminated from polemical essays
and sermons nowadays. Its oceans of fire, drink-
ing of melted lead, and brimstone, myriads of
howling, cursing demons, flitting about among
the lost souls, and the horrible imdying worm
in whose folds the wretches were writhing, visions
which sometimes yet haunt the dreams of those
who in childhood, seventy years ago, heard such
things thimdered from every pulpit, are now
relegated to the domains of fanatic superstitions
and fossilized beliefs. Those horrors have been
transformed by the demands of modem Christian-
ity into the milder punishment of mental tortures
and eternal exclusion from God. The evolutions
of religious belief in the near future will certainly
eliminate Satan and the ancient hell from the
universe.

Satan 261

There is and always has been evil in the world.
The pages of history sicken us with the records
of it; our own observations disgust us. But
all evil comes from the passions and appetites of
the children of Adam and Eve, who were created
with them, just as their descendants are. In
the economy of God's government no devil was
created to redouble temptation and fan the
flames of passion. Why God created man as he
is and always was, we know not, but doubtless
in His wise economy it is best. As Adam and
Eve were, so we their children are. We inherit
all the nature and tendencies for good and evil
that we possess, and we have free agency sufficient
to induce us to love and prefer the good, even
when overborne by our frailties and carried into
evil. None are wholly good; none are entirely
evil. When God created our first parents He
knew just what they and their posterity would
be and do, and His purposes have not been
thwarted. When we do evil it is the inexorable
law of our nature that we must suffer, but it will
be temporary and finite pimishment. When we
do well we are recompensed with good ; and there
wiU be equable adjustments of pimishments and
rewards here and hereafter, and an ultimate
restoration to good. We do enough and too
much evil, and God did not create a devil to help
by overpowering temptation to make us infinitely
more wicked than we are Hable to be naturally.

262 Evolution of Religions

Most of human sin grows out of ignorance, pas-
sion, and heredity, not much from deliberate
choice of sin. If our first parents and all their
posterity should have been forever sinless with-
out Satanic temptation, then ex necessitate it
was God's will that the primeval state of inno-
cence should cease, and the world's history of
sin, disease, and death should be written as it has
been. Such, if true, is the inevitable logic of the
story of Eden and the fall. Orthodoxy can
take either horn of the dilemma.

There are imdoubtedly, as many of the most
eminent Jewish and Christian scholars of the
present day assert, and clearly prove, numerous
matters in the Bible that are not inspired nor are
they communications from God, as we under-
stand inspiration to be. Many errors of fact that
have got into successive editions and redactions
of its various books, many mere legends and
traditions derived from folklore originally, and
magnified into the miraculous, many allegories,
metaphorical and poetic fictions, often grand and
beautiful, but outside of the realm of fact, so that
it is often difficult to know what is really intended
to be taught as veritable truths, or to separate
allegories and illustrative fictions from actual
facts, or to clearly understand the truths they are
intended to convey. Inspiration is only wrought
certainly into and can be clearly predicated of
its sublime ethics, its revelations of God's attri-

Satan 263

butes, and its history of the progressive develop-
ment of our race, along through the centuries
from the beginning of time. It teaches emphati-
cally that God ever rules in the imiverse, and
that nothing ever happens contrary to His will.
There are no accidents in human life, none at
least in God's economy. Jesus says that a
sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His
knowledge, and that God numbers every hair
of our heads. Yet orthodoxy teaches that God
sits on His throne and permits Satan to go on
forever with his accursed work of evil, irresist-
ibly dragging down the vast majority of the
human family into endless misery, God only
sometimes helping man in the conflict with Satan,
who is generally the victor, when He could at
once easily compel Satan to cease his work for-
ever, or else annihilate him. The theory of
orthodoxy is utterly absurd and derogatory to
God. Its reign is waning. The world, in the
not distant future, will have a loving Almighty
Father, but no Satanic majesty in its moral
government.

Good and evil, we repeat, virtue and vice, as
the results of natural forces, affections, passions,
temperaments, heredity, social influences, and
life environments, are interwoven into our lives
and involved absolutely in God's mysterious
governmental economy. Says Rev. Minot J.
Savage in an article on the subject: "Here let it

264 Evolution of Religions

be clearly understood and kept in mind that an
infinite being must be held as ultimately and
solely responsible for whatever he either ordains
or permits. Keep also clearly in mind the dis-
tinction between an evil that is only temporary,
and one that is eternal. Any kind or amount of
evil and suffering that are temporary, that are
only experiments in the development of a soul,
may conceivably be justified by the final outcome.
But in the nature of the case, eternal evil and
suffering can have no outcome excepting more
evil and suffering, and cannot, therefore, in
morals be justified." *

This argument is logical, clear as a demon-
stration in mathematics, and unanswerable
excepting by sophistry. We indorse every word
of it. Moreover, we add that eternal evil and
suffering cannot be justified by any system of
morals of earth or heaven that is true, for the
code of morals which God has given us in the
Bible must be in the answer of our consciences,
the code universal and eternal. Therefore by
that code, eternal punishment cannot be true.
St. Thomas de Aquinas, one of the great Catholic
Fathers of the Middle Ages, says: "God eternally
knows all things as present, and through that
knowledge those things themselves are caused."
To know, with God, is to be. What He knows
now, or in the future, is done, and all things are

* North American Review, vol. 148, p. 921.-

Satan 265

as He wills. There are no such beings in the
universe, or at least on earth, as Satan and his
angels, and all that any religions have ever taught
of such denizens of hell and of hell itself are
delusions bom of priestcraft, superstition, igno-
rance, and fear.

Enough, alas! too much, temptation to sin is
evolved from human passions, human wants, and
stiff erings; often absolutely dominated and con-
trolled by overmastering heredity, without any
need of help from Satanic influences. Indeed,
this heredity in our physical and moral natures
is really the law of nature in the propagation of
all animal life. It is the "visiting the sins of the
fathers upon the children of the third and fourth
generations of them that hate me, and showing
mercy unto thousands" (or really all of them)
"that love God and keep His commandments."
It was simply the misconception by Moses of a
physical law as a moral law. The dreams of
St. John in Revelation about Satan and hell, and
his infernal powers on earth (if indeed the Revela-
tion is St. John's and not the product of some
visionary mind), have no basis of credence or
support elsewhere in the Bible and are utterly
unsubstantiated. As has been already said in
these pages, for several centuries after their
appearance their authorship was doubted, and
on account of their extraordinary character, and
unsustained by any evidence or reasons whatever

266 Evolution of Religions

to substantiate any claims to inspiration, they
were refused admission into the New Testament
list or canon, and were classed as Apocryphal
writings.

Narratives of casting out devils from persons
supposed to be possessed of them, are not foimd
in the Hebrew Scriptures, and those narrated in
the New Testament or claimed to have been
performed in subsequent times have no con-
firmatory evidence, as miracles tending to prove
there were or are such beings, and the environ-
ments of such stories, show that the demons, of
which those persons were said to have been
possessed, were purely imaginary, and that they
were only sufferers from insanity.

Again, infinite punishment for finite and ephem-
eral sins is an imjust, impious, and immoral
doctrine, untrue by every analysis and test of
reason and justice. Our sins are the events of a
fleeting day; our lives are but a shadow of time.
The punishment supposed is, for, maybe, millions
and billions of years, endless, eternal. Accord-
ing to orthodoxy, the pimishment is virtually
the same for all sins, and for persons of all ages
and conditions. Indeed, according to Calvinis-
tic theology, hell is for all human beings, except-
ing the eternally elect and predestined to heaven,
without, it would seem, much, if any, regard to
merits or demerits, because the "elect are so
divinely hedged about during earthly life that

Satan 267

salvation through final perseverance iinto the
goal of the heavenly life, was a termination and
gift of infinite grace which absolutely must
result." * Indeed, in St. Paul's Epistle to Romans,
if his language originally has not been tampered
with by fanatics, that school of theology had broad
warrant for such doctrine.^ For he saith to
Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I will have
mercy, and will have compassion on whom I will
have compassion." "Therefore hath He mercy
on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will
He hardeneth. Shall the thing formed say to
Him that formed it, Why hast thou made me
thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay,
of the same lump to make one vessel imto honor,
and another unto dishonor? What if God,
willing to show His wrath, and to make His power
known, endured with much longsuffering the
vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: and
that He might make known the riches of His
glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had
afore prepared imto glory?"' To the same
effect in a previous passage we find: "For whom
He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of His Son, that He
might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He
also called; and whom He called, them He also

* Westminster Confession of Faith.
' St. Paul's Epistle to Romans, ch. ix.

268 Evolution of Religions

justified; and whom He justified, them He also
glorified." '

Who authorized Paul to teach the doctrines of
election, predestination, justification, and, of
course, through no matter what intermediate
mazes of sin and crime, preceded probably by con-
version, the final perseverance and salvation of the
elect ? Paul was not authorized by the Savior to
teach such doctrine. Jesus never taught it. His
parables of the great marriage supper and of the
owner of the vineyard who paid the eleventh-hour
laborers the same wages as those who had borne
the heat and the burden of the day, did not teach
election and predestination, but only illustrated
that of many who were invited to the heavenly
feast, only a few got there, and not always those
who had first and best opportunities, and that
sometimes those who came into God 's moral vine-
yard late in life were equally rewarded with early
converts, probably because they were more zeal-
ous in God's service and did more acceptable
work.

As an amelioration of the awful doom of some
of the myriads who are condemned to endless pun-
ishment, we are told by the believers in that doc-
trine that there are gradations in the sufferings of
the damned accordingly as they are young or old,
were greater or less sinners, or had greater or less
light and opportunities in earthly life.

* St. Paul's Epistle to Romans, ch. viii, vs. 29-30.

Satan 269

Note, this is merely a concession to the liberal-
ism of the age. The Scriptures, if they really
teach the doctrine of eternal punishment, warrant
no such distinctions. But even if so, cut bono?
Let us illustrate. The child of a dozen years who
has come to the knowledge of good and evil and
dies imcon verted, must, according to Calvinism,
go to eternal piinishment. A wicked man who
has lived to old age in sin, dies and goes to hell.
Now, it is endless hell, hopeless hell, for both, and
little matters it to the poor child that his suffer-
ings may not be quite so severe as the old sinner's,
when they must be, as his, eternal. So with those
who go there, who have had less knowledge or op-
portimities than others, what matters it to them
if hell is endless? For by those who believe
in a spiritual and not a bodily resurrection, we are
not informed how the fiery billows of perdition can
bum and torture the disembodied spirit? For
the old-fashioned hell of our ancestors, we suppose,
a bodily resurrection is essential.

Away with such a creed ! It is a horrible delu-
sion, another Mephistophelian doctrine. But let it
remain in the Scriptures, if it really is taught there,
as a curiosity, a relic of bigotry, ignorance, and
superstition. All denominations of Christians,
excepting Unitarians and Uni versa lists, still
teach it in its old-fashioned terms, in confessions
of faith and liturgies, but it is seldom or never
preached as of yore from pulpits, and few,

270 Evolution of Religions

excepting Catholics, really believe it or are
influenced by it in their daily lives. But in
these latter days, in order to temper the dogma
of eternal pimishment to weak and doubting
Christians who would rebel against it in its
naked deformity, it is in vogue to repudiate the
old-time hell, with its oceans of fire, its infernal
tortures of the undying worm, and its drinks of
molten lead, with vivid descriptions of which we
used to be regaled in sermons in our boyhood
days, such sermons as intelligent, orthodox
Christians would not now tolerate, and to teach
that hell is a condition or result to which the
sins of the wicked and impenitent bring them,
and not a world, abyss, or place of literal bodily
torture prepared for such by the eternal decrees
of God. That imcon verted of their sins when they
die, the wicked could not live in heaven with God
and the redeemed any more than pure good men
and women could live agreeably in close com-
panionship with the wicked and impure on earth,
and hence must necessarily gravitate to hell
and the companionship of devils, and must
there, as moral qualities either improve or
degenerate, ex necessitate, continue growing in
wickedness, and that their sufferings result only
from remorse and the torments of their con-
sciences and regrets for loss of heaven. That
the ancient traditional fires are fictions, that any
change of heart and repentance in that world

Satan 271

among the wicked and damned is impossible, or
would not be heeded by God, if possible, and
hence that the horrible condition of the lost must,
from necessity, eternally continue. This is, of
course, a great modification of the old dogma of
hell, and made as a concession to the liberalism
of the age, though not in accordance with the
descriptions in Revelation which were insisted
upon literally as infallible and inspired pictures
of hell for eighteen himdred years. But really
this latter day, and apparently more liberal and
humane theory of eternal punishment, does not
in the least change or modify the relations of
Satan to God and man. He and his angels are
still permitted their work, as of yore, of enticing
souls and filling hell in each generation of man-
kind with most of the hiunan family just the
same as ever, and the eternal result is the same,
excepting that in the present conceptions of most
Christians, mental torments are substituted for
the old-time material fires of hell.

In fact, the modernized Christian hell is sub-
stantially the mythological Greek Hades, with
the exception that only a vast majority of souls
go to the Christian Hades, and not all, as they did
to the dominions of Pluto across the gloomy
Styx. And when it is considered that material
fires could not probably under any conditions
affect disembodied or incorporeal essences, imless
after the resurrection in some mysterious way,

272 Evolution of Religions

material bodies were furnished the lost in hell,
the modernized idea of change of punishment in
perdition does not seem to amount to much of a
gain. The lost are, as in the old idea of hell,
lost forever, and forever exiled from mercy and
from God. Their pimishment and doom are
eternal, and the old serpent, the devil, pursues
his ancient vocation on earth after more victims,
imrestrained, and that vocation will continue, so
far as we are informed, while the world rolls on
its axis. The new theory does not seem to be
much of a gain for the lost, excepting as they may
blame themselves more and God less, in the con-
templation that the eternity of their exile from
God is a necessary result, according to God's
laws, of their impenitence on earth. But the
result, the endless doom of the lost under God's
decrees, is the same imder either theory or con-
dition of hell, and Satan's work on earth, imre-
strained of God, continues ever the same. So
that practically there is no gain to the lost in
the modem theory of hell and its limitations,
excepting in the absence of fiery torments, which
they, imder the old theory, were forever enabled
to sustain, but which as spirits could not hurt
them anyhow.

But if not doomed by the decrees of the
Almighty to eternal punishment and exile, why
should there be no end of it ? Why not a world
of probation and repentance? Certainly there is

Satan 273

no proportion of justice between finite sins and
eternal punishment. No sane man will argue
that there can be. A fanatic is not sane. There
may be pimishment in a future life; all sins and
violations of God's moral and nature's physical
laws are punished ; but most, we opine, are pun-
ished on earth. Some offenses and offenders may
not have had meted out to them due punish-
ment on earth. But our memories will remain,
and we shall know all in the future we knew
here. Surely, if in the future life, the wicked can
have the volition to continue in sin and imrepent-
ant, they can also have the volition to repent.
Feeling remorse for past misdeeds, as admittedly
they will, loathing the companionship of the wicked
and desperate, as well as naturally longing for
the joys of heaven, and association with the good
and happy — surely they will sooner or later es-
chew love of sin, and heartily repent of past mis-
deeds. This must in the immortal nature of man
be so. Therefore, according to the new orthodoxy,
as only the stubborn persistence in rebellion of those
who have gone to the bad world keeps them there ;
therefore, per contra, sincere, humble repentance
would at once open their prison doors and admit
them to a reconciled God and the heavenly Para-
dise. This is practically the Catholic doctrine of
purgatory, liberally and universally applied.

Under the new theory of orthodoxy, no decree
of God bars universal repentance, and imiversal

274 Evolution of Religions

restoration of all humanity to heaven. Therefore,
imder the new theory of future ptinishment car-
ried out to legitimate and natural results, the evil
world would soon be depopulated, excepting of any
incorrigibles who might prefer remaining there,
"rather ruling in hell than serving in heaven."
The result would be the universal salvation and
restoration of all the human family to eternal ha p-
piness, a result which only the supposed eternal de-
crees of God, as interpreted by orthodoxy, or the
incorrigible stubbornness of the wicked, could pre-
vent of fulfillment. If reason, memory, volition,
identity of self, remain with us in the future life
(and if not, we would be no longer the selves we
were on earth), then there is no reason — there can
be no reason given — why repentance could not
be in that life as well as in this, and no reason why
infinite mercy would not be — yes, if infinite, must
be — vouchsafed to the wretched and penitent in
that world as well as in this.

Our modem ideas of hell are merely evolutions
of the intelligence and charity of the age, from the
old Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Brahman, Buddhist,
Greek, and Christian beliefs of the past, and they
are keeping pace with the progress of liberal reli-
gious sentiments. Doubtless in the coming years,
those old imaginary realms of darkness and de-
spair, of those various old religions, will be forgot-
ten, or only remembered through antiquarian
literature and classed with other biblical Apocry-

Satan 275

pha. As the light of knowledge spreads, true
religion assumes fairer and happier forms, and
the goblins of ignorance, bigotry, and superstition
vanish, as the shades of night before the simrise.
It is one of the peculiar phases of religious belief,
and doubtless owing largely to the influences of
early training and impressions which are hardly
ever entirely shaken off, no matter how erroneous,
that Rev. Charles D. Briggs, the accomplished
Bible scholar, usually so liberal and advanced in
his religious views, who seems, from the tone of his
writings, to have little faith in miracles generally,'
and who in many instances denies, in toto, and in
other instances strongly questions the commonly
assumed authorship of biblical books, and who
points out so many errors and interpolations in
them, facts utterly at variance with the dogma of
their infallibility, should apparently believe in the
doctrine of eternal pimishment, though he says
but little on the subject in any of his writings, and
indeed seems to evade the discussion of it.

Another apparent inconsistency in his teachings
is, that while he refers so strongly and depreciat-
ingly as he does in many places, to the conflicting
doctrines of many eminent Jewish and Christian
writers of all ages, in reference to biblical exegesis

^ He says in "The Bible, the Church, the Reason," Appen-
dix, p. 279, "But it has been found easier to prove the
Divinity of Christ without miracles, as if there were no
such things as miracles and predictions in the Sacred Scrip-
tures."

276 Evolution of Religions

and belief, and himself differs so widely from many
of them, upon a multitude of matters of biblical
history, canon, tradition, authority, and doctrine,
he should himself persistently urge that the Holy
Spirit in the Bible taught so and so, on many ques-
tions, and that the Holy Spirit's guidance on all
controverted questions should be and was the only
sure standard of biblical interpretation. Doubt-
less, he is theoretically correct. But who is to
make the application? The Holy Spirit's only
guidance is in the language and text of the Bible,
and it has spoken only in the same text through
many centuries, and to thousands of priests and
scholars in all their diversified interpretations, the
same as it speaks now. Who is authorized apart
from the Bible text itself to affirm that the Holy
Spirit means or declares so and so upon any ques-
tion of fact and doctrine? The Catholic Church
assumes that the Pope of Rome, as vicegerent of
God, is infallible, and has authority to declare in
accordance with the canons of the Church and
the decrees of general councils what are the Holy
Spirit's teachings as to any and all matters in the
Bible. Protestants, however, as well as the Greek
Church, and of course Rev. Briggs, deny his
authority to do so.

As a matter of fact, although surely we must
admit that the Holy Spirit's guidance should be
the infallible standard of construction and belief,
if that guidance and teaching were always surelv

Satan 277

vouchsafed to ministers of the Gospel or to any
special persons, yet the burning question is —
How are we to know certainly at any time or place
who is under such gtddance and what construction
of its teachings is infallible ? Who is the inspired
prophet or expoimder of Scriptures, and when
expoimders differ, who or which is infallible ? Un-
derlying these questions is the whole subject of
biblical authenticity and interpretations, doctrines
and miracles. Oh, could we but know surely the
Holy Spirit's will and have His guidance in all
things, all questions pertaining to the Bible and
religion would be speedily settled. But the end-
less and eternal controversy, as Dr. Briggs well
knows, between all creeds and sects, bishops,
priests, and controversialists, translators and in-
terpreters, Jews and Christians alike, has been
and is: not that the Bible standard is not the
infallible one, but as to what the Holy Spirit in
that standard does surely teach. God is the Holy
Spirit, and He delegates or transmits His wisdom
and knowledge only in finite degrees to man.

The Bible is God's teaching through men to
man. Man's reason is given to interpret and
apply it. So Briggs' standard of interpretation
is the true one, but only in this, that the Holy Spirit
speaks in the Bible to each reader of it according
to the light of his own reason and conscience.
Absolutely in all things what the Holy Spirit
does teach in the Bible is the whole open field of

278 Evolution of Religions

Scripture controversy over again, and the truth
will never perhaps, in all its essentials, be fully
known on this side of eternity. Each individual
has in the Bible the Holy Spirit's guidance for
himself as he honestly and fearlessly reads and
believes it, and God has vouchsafed to man on
earth no other guidance. It may teach me one
thing on any given question. It may teach
Dr. Briggs otherwise on the same subject. The
error between us, if there be one, is in our dif-
ferent enlightenment and judgment. Such seems
to us to be the whole sum and substance of the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit's guidance. God's
attribute of infallibility is not given to man.
Man is groping his way to light, but its effulgence
will only fully irradiate the future life where we
are promised, "We shall know as we are known."
The Holy Spirit's guidance is only vouchsafed in
this life through human intellects. And so it is
God's will. He alone knows ultimate truth. All
man can do is to seek for that truth as earnestly
as he can. Jesus Christ left His teachings only
to the memories of his followers. So Dr. Briggs'
standard resolves itself only in the Bible as it is
and as it is imderstood by various minds.

The Holy See of Rome assumes to be the infal-
lible expoimder of the Bible, but only the mem-
bership of that church believes in such infallibility.
The guidance of the Holy Spirit has been sought
in all ages by the prophets and priests of all reH-

Satan 279

gions, but it has only been obtained to the degree
that they have been inspired to teach the truths of
reHgion, imperfectly, as we have them in the vari-
ous Holy Books of earth. But absolute divine
guidance, so that the human exponents of God's
teachings shall be understood the same by every-
one in all things, has never been obtained, and most
likely never will be this side of eternity. Each and
all of the thousands of biblical translators, commen-
tators, and polemical writers, Jewish and Christian,
in all their multiplicity of writings, versions, and
interpretations, claimed to have sought and many
to have foimd the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
But the world knows the conflicting results. So
that such guidance should be clearly known and
infallibly correct, how are the teachers or how are
their followers to know, unless all honestly agree ?
Why if there is such guidance, independently of
the written word, should so many claiming it
differ so widely as they do, and always have done ?
Is Dr. Briggs an infallible exponent of the Bible ?
From the air of authority with which he speaks, one
is apt to imagine that he feels so. Generally we
indorse his views upon Bible exegesis. He is brave,
liberal, and honest, profoundly learned, of great
ability, and possessing the courage of his convic-
tions. He doubtless seeks the highest light, but man
can only partially obtain it through the teachings of
the Bible, and in nature's open book, and the light
is refracted to each one according to the different

28o Evolution of Religions

mediums of intellect, capacities, and environments
it filters through. The supreme truth is only in
God Himself. We do not think that Dr. Briggs
is correct in assuming that Jesus is the Yahveh or
Jehovah of the Old Testament, and that all or any
of the Mosaic sacrifices, ceremonies, and services
are typical symbols of His future coming to earth,
and vicarious sacrifice on the Cross, or that the old
prophetic ascriptions to Jehovah, ever refer to
Jesus. We have already stated many reasons why
we believe such assumption is unauthorized. In
addition, we may remark further that if Jehovah
exists in the triime personality of Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, He so existed, as well, during the old
dispensation as afterwards, and this relation would
undoubtedly have been spoken of through inspir-
ation in the days of the prophets, as well as in the
new dispensation, if it were so. But it is not, and
God is everywhere spoken of in the old Scriptures
as one and only one God, as if to exclude any other
idea of Deity, but oneness.

Isaiah, the greatest of all the Hebrew prophets,
absolutely puts the seal of condemnation, as if by
anticipating them, upon such later theories, in
many of his prophetic teachings and particularly
in the first chapter, wherein he declares emphat-
ically that all the Hebrew sacrifices and sacrificial
rites were not only unauthorized by Jehovah, but
were an abomination to Him, and hence they could
not be in any way typical or symbolical of His

Satan 281

future coming to earth in human form and as
a sacrificial vicarious atonement. Others of the
prophets, and particularly Micah, affirm the same
disapproval by Yahveh, of sacrifices.* Apart from
such prophetic condemnation, we may reasonably
ask, why should God manifest or typify Himself
as a future Messiah, bom of woman, through the
debasing symbols of the similar heathen rites of
the surrounding idolatrous nations, the bloody
sacrifices of beasts and birds? Is it reasonable?
Does it comport with Almighty wisdom, power,
and glory, that He should do so ? The idea of such
sacrifice being acceptable to God, is repulsive, and
its frequent denunciation by the prophets must be
in accordance with God 's aversion to this unseemly
worship. The sacrificial worship of Israel was
simply an institution of a semi-barbarous people
copied from the customs of the surrounding na-
tions, and was not from God. It is absurd to believe
otherwise in the light and civilization of the present
day, and it would not now be believed as ever from,
or sanctioned by God were it not so taught in the
Pentateuch. It was simply an absurd and barba-
rous system of worship of a barbarous age, adopted
mainly from the Egyptians, to the worship of
whose gods the Israelites were always so prone
to return for centuries, notwithstanding Moses and
the prophets. So besotted were they that they
were frequently guilty of human sacrifices, as well

> Micah, ch. vi.

282 Evolution of Religions

as of beasts ; to Baal, Rimmon, Moloch, and other
gods.*

The Almighty has revealed Himself to the extent
that men were qualified to comprehend His mes-
sages in the ages of the world's ignorance through
chosen missionaries. Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses,
Isaiah, Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Seneca,
Cicero, Antoninus Pius, were all, in greater or
less degree, inspired teachers of God 's will. Jesus
Christ, the greatest of all prophets, was nearest
divinity, and His teachings most divine. Doubt-
less even Mohammed, the Mormon teachers,
Swedenborg, and other authors of assumed revela-
tions, had missions to perform in the divine econ-
omy of some importance; but there was little of
originality in their teachings, or in the historic or
miraculous fictions which they promulgated. The
knowledge imparted to their followers, by those
who were given the Holy Spirit's light, had natur-
ally to be communicated in the ideas and language
of the teachers and hearers to their fellow-men, and
fallibility was inseparable to the communication
of the messages. In after-times, translators and
expounders of those messages, from the manu-
scripts in which they were originally written, made
changes, additions, or interpolations which they
supposed gave greater clearness and emphasis to
their teachings. In so doing, they sometimes in-
jected their own sense of what obscure or doubtful

* II Kings, ch. xvii, v. 17.

Satan 283

readings ought to be when translated into other
languages and versions. Such we know has been
the case with all ancient writings, and especially
sacred books, all versions of which greatly differ.
Such would naturally be the case, even more so, in
controversial matters or renderings into other lan-
guages of texts which affected different sectarian
doctrines and creeds, than in matters of mere
morals, law, history, etc. Investigation and com-
parison of texts and contemporaneous writings
have shown this to be the case, as well with
our Bible as with the sacred books of other reli-
gions. Nothing is too sacred for fanaticism and
bigotry to pervert and change, to justify their
own purposes, or maintain their usually narrow
and illiberal doctrines. The translations of our
Bible in the Dark Ages, by incompetent or secta-
rian translators, suffered from such experiments.
Ancient writings of all kinds, from want of system
in composition, no division or separation into
chapters, sections, and verses, mingling of subjects,
all capital letters, or no capital letters, no system
of punctuation at all, and other defects, were very
difficult to translate correctly, or to understand.
Many ancient languages, as the Hebrew, Greek,
and Latin, had a rather narrow vocabulary, and
hence the same words were so used and might
have a dozen different meanings or shades of
meaning, according to the subject-matter or
context, and hence it was easy and natural, for

284 Evolution of Religions

instance, in translators of biblical manuscripts
who might be imbued with strong bias or secta-
rian feelings, to give a bearing to their render-
ings of the text entirely in harmony with their
doctrinal views, but really at variance with,
or something else than the original.

No manuscripts of Bible books of an earlier date
than about the year 1000 a.d. are now in exist-
ence, and that was an age of extreme ignorance,
bigotry, and superstition. Indeed, all ancient
writings, sacred and profane, are from these and
other causes imperfect and more or less imreliable.
Ignorance, superstition, credulity, incorporation
of mythical as well as purely legendary matters,
are discernible in all ancient writings. As to the
Bible, largely from the ambiguities of expression,
and the different shades of meaning given by an-
cient translators and interpreters, notwithstanding
the honestly sought for and, doubtless, supposed
guidance of the Holy Spirit, have resulted the
formation of innumerable sects of Christians, some
teaching Trinitarianism, and some Unitarianism ;
some the doctrine of eternal punishment; others
the belief in universal salvation ; to others creeds
diametrically opposite and at variance, not only
about such important matters, but contending
also, and sometimes bitterly, about such non-essen-
tials as modes of baptism, and whether infants and
adults, or only adults, should be baptized ; adminis-
tration of the Eucharist or Lord's Supper; ques-

Satan 285

tions of election, predestination, foreordination,
transubstantiation, and yet other matters more
trivial; some sects of Christians even making
certain of those comparatively imimportant differ-
ences, as regarded in the light of reason and com-
mon sense, absolute barriers to common Christian
fellowship, or even a passport to heaven, of those
good, pure, and worthy who otherwise held con-
trary beliefs. No doubt St. Augustine, Chrysostom,
Philo, Origen, Eusebius, Arius, Pelagius, Celestius,
St. Thomas de Aquinas, Savonarola, Loyola, Gior-
dano Bruno, Servetus, Calvin, Luther, Neander,
William Pcnn, Priestley, Dr. Channing, Sweden-
borg. Sir Isaac Newton, Wesley, and thousands of
other good men and able Christian scholars, were
equally honest, and each perhaps sought and
believed themselves to be imder the guidance of
the Holy Spirit, and yet all held different religious
opinions, and arrived, many of them, at widely
opposite conclusions, none of them entirely agreeing
with the others in their writings and teachings on
biblical matters.

On the other side, Strauss, Renan, Gratz, Well-
hausen, Wendell Phillips, Emerson, Theodore
Parker, and other great scholars and philosophers,
who were no doubt equally as learned and well in-
formed in biblical lore, reached entirely different
conclusions on almost all scriptural subjects from
those other great men. All minds are differently
constituted. No two persons on earth are exactly

286 Evolution of Religions

alike physically or can exactly see or think alike ;
and in the divine economy, diversity of thought and
opinion, in all fields of knowledge among all men,
seems to be the universal law. Hence the guid-
ance of the Holy Spirit is in each man's con-
science and judgment. Each one should study
the Scriptures for himself and obey the voice of
God as it speaks to him in its pages, and that is
literally following the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Its gmdance of another may not be the "inner
voice" for myself.

CHAPTER XIV

UNIVERSAL SALVATION

TO me the whole Bible, as one religion and
light coming from God, the Universal Father,
teaches that life is but a probation and that all
human beings will sooner or later enjoy God's
bovindless mercy. The scheme of salvation of
narrow orthodoxy, including the sacrificial atone-
ment for and redemption of some, and the eternal
punishment of most of the human race, was not
evolved in the old dispensation, even remotely,
nor taught by Jesu's Christ. As has been already
said, it was evolved in the Dark Ages of Christen-
dom by narrow-minded, bigoted ecclesiastics. The
Hebrew olden sacrifices were not types of Jesus'
death. Half of the time in the history of Israel
they were offered to Baal, Moloch, Rimmon,
Ashtaroth, and other deities of the surroimding
nations, and in the same groves and on the same
altars, and by the same priests, as had been used
and officiated for the worship and offerings to
Elohim or Jehovah. No intimation whatever of
the sacrifices being of a symbolic character or
as typical of the death or sacrifice of some other
being, much less of deity, or of one of the persons

287

288 Evolution of Religions

of a triiine God, was ever given in the Old Testa-
ment. Such ideas were evolved first in the apos-
tolic writings, and only allegorically in them.

If the sacrifices, instead of being the adoption of
a religious custom of surrounding nations, were
really typical of Christ's Crucifixion, why was it
thought necessary to slaughter thousands and tens
of thousands of victims for centuries annually?
And why a variety of animals, bulls, heifers, goats,
sheep, and birds? What was symbolized by cut-
ting the animals to pieces before offering them on
the altars? Or by offerings of bread, cakes, wine,
etc. ? At some of the great feasts, thousands of
animals were slaughtered at one time. Would
not a monthly or yearly sacrifice of one animal
as a type or symbol have been sufficient and vastly
more impressive and refining than the daily sacri-
fice of himdreds or thousands, and thus avoid turn-
ing altars, erected to worship of God, into
shambles? The priests and Levites, it is true,
mostly got their food from the sacrificial animals,
but why go through the forms of sacrificing all of
them? If the sacrifices were designed, as claimed
by Trinitarians, to remind the children of Israel
of the future coming of a Savior of sinners, who
was Himself to become a sacrificial atonement,
certainly from any knowledge we now have, they
never so spoke of them nor regarded them. No-
where in the Bible are they mentioned in that
light. They were spoken of solely as propitiations

Universal Salvation 289

for sins. Frequently God, through the prophets,
spoke of His abhorrence of such sacrifices.^

Would He have done so if they were really
typical symbols of the Crucifixion of His Son ? If
in the latter days of Israel's adversities, the
prophets spoke of a Messiah to come in the dis-
tant future, He was heralded as Shiloh, or as a
great prince of the House of David who would
reign over all Israel in righteousness, and would
possibly subdue all the world to His dominion, or
at least restore the pristine greatness of the King-
dom of David and Solomon, the glories of which
age, when their empire extended from the Mediter-
ranean or " Great Sea " to the Euphrates, and from
the river of Egypt to Damascus, the Jews never
ceased to extol and exaggerate, and for a return of
which through a prince of that royal line in future
ages, their hopes ever went out, and their last
dying prayer to Jehovah was uttered.

All of Israel's impassioned poetic visions when
not perverted or added to, as they were frequently
by subsequent Christian translators and expound-
ers, had sole reference to such a prince. All of
the prophecies of Isaiah from the fortieth chapter
to the sixty-sixth, were additions made during
or after the captivity, and the grotesque head-
ings of chapters, not only in Isaiah, but in all the
prophets, were made by Trinitarian scholars after
the division of the Bible into chapters and verses,

> Isaiah i, 11-15. Micah vi, 6-7.

290 Evolution of Religions

and prove nothing and are often entirely inappli-
cable and inappropriate. Jesus' death was not
an atoning sacrifice, predestined from the day of
the Edenic tragedy, but a most wicked and ruth-
less murder of the great Prophet and Founder of
Christianity. All of Jesus' mission on earth was
outlined in His great sermon on Mount Olivet, and
there is not in it a single intimation of the doctrines
of the orthodox creed, and His simple teachings
are grander and truer than all the incomprehen-
sible dogmas ever written. Though some of the
expressions in the apostolic letters as we now
have them seem to coimtenance the orthodox
scheme of atonement and redemption, there are
reasons in the Gospels, and many facts of subse-
quent history, which prove conclusively that such
doctrines were evolved long after Jesus ' time and
were sustained by the manipulations and perver-
sions of the sacred writings by bigoted transla-
tors. One instance in point we will give. In the
King James version of the Bible in the First Epistle
of John, ch. V, v. 7, the text reads: "For there
are three that bear record in heaven, the Father,
the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three
are one." This, as an entire interpolation, is left
out of the revised version of the Bible by the
many able scholars who made it. This bold in-
terpolation shows conclusively what Trinitarian
fanaticism in the Dark Ages would do, and leaves
us to imagine what renderings it probably gave to

Universal Salvation 291

many other texts, and especially somewhat ob-
scure ones on the same subject. The Trinity was,
as already stated, first formally adopted and enun-
ciated as a creed by a bare majority out of some
five hundred bishops and suffragans of the Council
of Nicea, 325 a.d., and Unitarianism, which had
been the faith of the greater part of the Christian
world for the first two centuries and a half, and of
most of the Eastern or Asiatic churches, and of some
of the Western churches, imtil that time, was su-
perseded and anathematized by the majority of the
Council as aforesaid. But there were, neverthe-
less, many of the ablest bishops and priests who
still adhered to the Unitarian or Arian creed, and
it was not until the Council of Carthage, 511 a.d.,
that orthodoxy was finally established by the
Romish Church then dominating all Christendom.

Many of the greatest scholars and theologians
in Christendom have opposed orthodox tenets, and
this especially during the seventeenth, eighteenth,
and nineteenth centuries. The names of Socinus,
I\Iilton, Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, William Penn,
Dr. Channing, Dr. Priestley, Daniel Webster, Dr.
Franklin, Presidents John Adams and John
Quincy Adams, are among the brightest of those
centuries.

The Rev. I.E. Roberts, an eminent scholar and
minister of the Unitarian Church, in a sermon
delivered in Kansas City, Missouri, a few years
ago, said:

292 Evolution of Religions

"In the first one hundred years of Christianity
lived and wrought its founders. They were the
Judean Prophet and His Apostles, and their imme-
diate successors. They were prophets in the high-
est sense of the term, not because they foretold
future events, but because they were good men
and inspired teachers. They walked with God.
Their inspirations were from God. They were men
of faith; of such faith in the truth to win its way,
that they did not dream of any necessity of aug-
menting its force with dogmas or dramatizing it
with symbols. Of such faith in God's kingdom,
that they needed not the poor reenforcement of
an autocratic priesthood or a supernatural church.
This was the age, brief though it was, from whose
sown seed all the generations since have been gather-
ing the abundant harvests.^

"With the beginning of the second or mechani-
cal age of the Church, dogmas first took their rise.
During the first one hundred years of the ministry
of Christ and His Apostles, no writer, Pagan, Jew,
or Christian, is known to have set forth the doc-
trines of the immaculate conception, the material
resurrection, or the miracles of Jesus. None of
these things were written or taught during the
first century. The doctrines of the divinity of
Christ and of the trinity were not formulated till
the beginning of the fourth century; the doctrine
of original sin not until the fifth century, and that
of the atonement still later. Of all the doctrines
comprising orthodoxy, and which men have for

^ See p. 26.

Universal Salvation 293

centuries been taught they must believe or be for-
ever lost, not one was ever formulated by Jesus
Christ, or by His Apostles, nor by any one, until
centuries after their time. But the mechanical
age of religion, the age of creeds and dogmas, is
passing away. Men are again seeking the spirit
of that creative age, in which the immortal found-
ers of Christianity, without creed or formula, simply
confessed, by life and teaching, their love to God
and man, and in serving God, served both man and
God, and thus fulfilled religion's highest laws."

"Before the problems of eternal life, all men stand
'equal. The wise man and the ignorant, the pa-
triarch and the child, are alike mute and helpless,
but all peoples of all ages and religion have be-
lieved in the life beyond. This human instinct,
this deathless hope, symbolized itself in the Christ-
ian festival of the resurrection, which is linked by
its name of Easter to the spring celebrations of the
Teutonic nations, and by its associations with the
Hebrew Passover. This festival points chiefly to
the supposed resurrection of a great prophet from
the tomb, but in its wider meaning it stands for the
universal human instinct of the power of life to
transcend change and death. This deathless hope
was not conferred on man by any culture or reli-
gion. It was before them both. It is an essential
and inseparable part of human life. It has with-
stood doubt and fear, and endures perpetually in
spite of man 's inability to demonstrate the fact of

294 Evolution of Religions

immortality. It is ia accordance with what man
knows of life's progress from lower to higher forms,
and is the one assumption that gives unity and
sanity to the universe. It may be best that man
does not know more about the life beyond. It
must be best, or God would have given us more
knowledge of it. Our work for the passing day is
here. Death should only be looked upon as the
deliverance of life from the bondage of mortality,
a bondage more to be feared because it is a pleas-
ant one."

Verily, as Dr. Roberts says: "Immortality of
man is the one assumption that gives unity and
sanity to the imiverse." For man merely to live,
work, die, without any hereafter, what for? what
good ? If such be his end, in what would consist,
or where be found, the sanity of his creation, and
the adaptation of all this marvelous world to his
uses, enjoyments, and means of knowledge and
happiness? The world could exist without him,
with all its glories and blessings. Seed time and
harvest, winter and summer, could come and go,
but what for? Of what avail in the logic of wis-
dom that man should be created with all his semi-
divine powers and intellect merely to live and enjoy
those things for a few years and die in annihilation ?
Such an end to man would be, it seems to us, an
unsurmountable reflection upon the omnipotence,
omniscience, wisdom, and supposed infinite love
of God. But a still greater reflection upon the

Universal Salvation 295

wisdom and power of Deity it would be to admit
that in all this creation of myriads of immortal
beings, God's purposes were so fantastic, or so
over-ruled, or controlled by Satan, or destiny,
that the great majority of the human race are
doomed to suffer an eternal death of hopeless
misery after this life is over! Literally, if all but
an elect few are so doomed, then the creation of
man had apparently better never have been. But
the decrees of orthodoxy were bom of bigotry and
insanity. The truths of God's infinite wisdom
and love brush them aside as mere cobwebs.

CHAPTER XV

SUMMARY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM

THE books of the Hebrew and Christian Bible
compose a wonderful collection. As a com-
pendium of the history, religions, legends, and
traditions, of the myths, folk-lore, ethics, and
poetry of the ancient Hebrews, and indeed gener-
ally of the countries bordering on the eastern
Mediterranean Sea, it is unique and of inestim-
able value. There is no other book on earth like
it, nor any of such transcendent importance to all
mankind. It is a many-sided book. It contains
sublime ethics and revelations of deity, heights of
oratory, gems of poetry, and glimpses of a future
life, which for grandeur, simplicity, originality and
beauty, the libraries and literature of all nations
and all times may be challenged in vain to equal.
Its sketches of primitive patriarchal life and cus-
toms are more fresh and charming, old as they are,
than any modem stories of romance. Its ethics
are the truest and purest of any of the holy books
of other religions, and hence must have been com-
posed imder divine inspiration. They bear, per
se, their own credentials and stamps of divinity,
even as the God of our Bible has no peer in the

296

Summary of Biblical Criticism 297

delineations of deity in the other bibles of the
world, grand as some things in them are. Our
Bible contains the earliest and most reliable his-
tory of man extant, notwithstanding some imper-
fections. The truth of the ethics of our Bible and
their adaptation to human experience and needs
is self-evident. They are really, as similar ethics
in Zoroaster, Buddha, and Confucius' teachings,
axiomatic truths, and their divine origin does not
depend upon Bible miracles or history.

The prophets who were inspired to teach the
moral truths to their fellow -men may have been
so much influenced by their environments of su-
perstition, imiversal in those ancient times, as to
have intermixed much of the history they wrote
with myths, fables, and imreliable traditions, and
in their simplicity believed and penned those leg-
ends they found in common use, as historical facts.
They did so no doubt, and honestly, as all ancient
historians have done. But the light of the moral
sun which illuminated their minds was unclouded
by passion, ignorance, and superstition. The
ethics of our Bible are hence the world 's heritage.
But the historical and miraculous narratives in it
having to depend upon matters of memory, writ-
ings of other men, traditions, and time, like all
other human affairs, depend for their authenticity
upon evidence and proof. And whilst regarding
as unauthentic the miraculous stories of the Bible,
it is but justice to say that many of them are

298 Evolution of Religions

wonderful conceptions of the human mind; the
grandest and most poetic, illustrating the higher
culture of the age, and those of inferior char-
acter the lower strata of ignorance and super-
stition.

Our Bible is, we say once for all, preeminently
superior, as a whole, to all the other sacred books
of the world, and, notwithstanding its many purely
human features and defects, it will doubtless ever
remain as the supreme inspiration of divine light
to the world. It invites from everyone the most
rigid examination of its claims and the honest ex-
pression of belief or disbelief. The unfair and
sometimes ribald commentaries of Voltaire, Dide-
rot, Rousseau, Paine, and Ingersoll, have not ma-
terially diminished the luster of the Bible nor
greatly weakened its influence. Doubtless it has
lost something in power, truth, and beauty from
the original writings, in its compilations from un-
known authors, and in its many translations dur-
ing thousands of years into various different
languages, from the ancient manuscripts. How
foolish the claim of the Holy Spirit always direct-
ing compilers, translators, and copyists in their
work and keeping them from committing errors
Why did not the Holy Spirit, as means of avoid-
ing errors, instruct the workers to use originally
chapters, verses, pimctuation marks, vowels, etc.,
and indeed teach them, in the beginning of the
compilation of the Bible books, the art of

Summary of Biblical Criticism 299

printing? Facts are wanted, not conjectures or
fictions.

God has apparently always worked on earth,
through ordinary human agencies, and man has
had to use his intellect to discover those agencies.
How much the original sense of the Scriptures has
been changed in controversial matters by both
Jews and Christians, by incorrect renderings, or
even interpolations of translators and copyists,
who wished to infuse their own ideas into the text
as the correct version of what it should be, it is
very difficult in many matters of controversy now
to determine. We know, however, that many
emendations, alterations, and additions have been
made, as shown by the late revised version of the
Bible and by comparisons of other versions and
ancient commentaries. Even the Lord's Prayer,
than which there is nothing grander or more beau-
tiful in Scripture, has been tampered with and an
addition made to it. The Jewish rabbins taught
in the Talmud that it was right to pervert or
change any text of Scripture when deemed by
them to be for the interests of Judaism to do so.
In view, then, of errors, alterations, interpolations,
and even contradictions, in some statements, if
for no other reason, the claim of Bible inerrancy
is idle. Especially as to Scriptural history, bi-
ography, chronology, prophetic visions of futurity
which have been tinfulfilled, it is absurd, says Dr.
Briggs, "to suppose that the superintendence of

300 Evolution of Religions

inspiration extended to such merely human mat-
ters. Such does not seem to have been the
province of the Holy Spirit, nor is the welfare of
mortals, here or hereafter, involved in the absolute
accuracy of Bible history or of Bible miracles.
We know that in many such matters it is not
accurate."

Even as to biblical doctrines and tenets, there
is, as Dr. Briggs further truly says, "a spirit in
man which prompts many writers to add to truths,
which they have received, the suggestions of their
own minds as to the sense of what they think ought
to have been stated." This disposition he illus-
trates by the instance of the pious fanatic, Ignatius
Loyola, founder of the order of Jesuits, who
boldly taught his followers that Jesus after His
resurrection first appeared to His mother before
appearing to Mary of Magdala, because, he said, it
was the proper thing for Jesus to do so, that, as
"Mother of God," Jesus must first have been
seen by His mother after leaving the tomb.
Loyola required the brothers of his order so to
believe and teach, although the Gospels say Jesus
first appeared to Mary Magdalene. Loyola, with
the concurrence of Rome, thus perverted a plain
statement of the evangelists to accord with his
fanatical views, thus indorsing also an ancient
tradition to the same effect, which held the
evangelists' statements to be erroneous.

In fact, the Catholic Church held for centuries

Summary of Biblical Criticism 301

that the early traditions and oral teachings of the
Fathers were paramount in any matters of dif-
ference to the written word of the Gospels and
Epistles, and substitutions were frequently made,
thus subordinating the doctrine of plenary inspira-
tion to mere traditions. Yet, as is the Bible now,
with the imperfections of the many centuries of
translations out of languages known as "dead,"
through which it has come down to us, it is, we
repeat, the grandest book of earth, and the best,
peerless in its ethics and theology, and to the
honest and intelHgent reader, discarding all
bigotry and fossilized creeds, and fearlessly seek-
ing the truth, not alone in one or a few texts,
but in the spirit and concord of all its pages,
teaching a pure and holy religion, comforting in
time, and safe for eternity. Its historical narra-
tives, Jewish and Christian customs, laws, and
miracles, we may believe in or reject as our con-
victions and consciences guide us. We do not
need to believe in mysterious doctrines, unin-
telligible or incomprehensible. There are enough
grand, plain, clear-cut truths for our guidance.
We do not need to be non-resistants, communists,
or Adventists, neither are we required to eschew
any of the reasonable and healthful pleasures of
life for asceticism, penance for sins, or solitary
fastings, nor forbidden the honest accumulation
of property by industry and economy. The
world is for all to be happy and enjoy life. There

302 Evolution of Religions

are privileges, pleasures, and duties for all, and a
wide latitude for beliefs according to the general
tenor and rational interpretations of the Bible.
" The Scriptures," Jesus said, " were made for man,
and not man for the Scriptures."

CHAPTER XVI

A GENERAL SUMMARY OF BIBLE EXEGESIS

AS a summary of what historical, ethnological,
theological, geological, and general scientific
examinations of the Bible by eminent scholars
in the past century have accomplished, as general
conclusions in reference to the most important
incidents in its history and literature, and without
going more fully into details or comments than
has already been done in these pages, we affirm
the following conclusions concerning some of the
most important historical and miraculous narra-
tives in it which have been indubitably established
by such examinations, and will doubtless stand
the test of future criticism.

First. The creation of the world or its evolu-
tion from primitive chaos into conditions fitting
it for the existence of life, vegetable and animal,
certainly antedates the accoimt of Genesis, accord-
ing to Hebrew chronology, by many hundreds
of thousands, perhaps millions, of years during
the Archaian, or Eozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and
Cenozoic Ages. The "beginning," when God
created the heavens and the earth, goes back into
the years of eternity, and only the Creator knows

303

304 Evolution of Religions

the date. Whether our earth was originally an
immense body or matter thrown ofi by the sun
in a great explosion of its electrical forces, or
formed from an accumulation and aggregation
during countless centuries of the meteoric masses
whirling through illimitable space, imtil finally
consolidated into spherical form and given its
present orbit by Omnipotence, we shall never know
unless we learn it in the future life. But science
teaches that for many hundreds of thousands of
years after such creation or consolidation of its
original material, the earth was going through the
formative processes which left its mountains,
plains, hills, valleys, oceans, seas, and rivers as
they have been since the advent of man, and
filled up its cavities with the vast deposits of
coals, oils, gases, and minerals which exist, for the
use of man, nearly everywhere.

Different thermal conditions than ever known
in history must have existed for centuries at some
time in order for the propagation and growth of
the wonderful vegetation from which all the de-
posits of coal, petroleum, and gases which now
exist were formed and generated. Neither man
nor animals, so far as science has discovered, were
in existence during those periods, nor was man
in existence during the long subsequent period,
when the earth and the seas were inhabited by the
monstrous forms of ancient extinct fossil animal
life, such as the mastodon and the immense am-

Summary of Bible Exegesis 305

phibia of the ancient oceans. In the "beginning"
the processes of creation, as narrated in Genesis,
were in the illimitable past, and even the creation
of man was, doubtless, many thousands of years
before the Mosaic chronology, as computed by
Archbishop Usher, or the authors of the Septu-
agint version of the Bible.

Very few, if any, scientists now place any reli-
ance on either of these chronologies, or in the fab-
ulous longevity of the antediluvian patriarchs.
The six days of creation, though doubtless used by
the writer or compiler of the Genesis records in the
ordinary sense of the word "day," are supposed
now by most scientists and Bible scholars to mean
periods of one thousand years each, or even much
longer periods, corresponding to the evolutions
and developments of the various processes of
creation or formation, in the Cenozoic Age of the
world. There is indeed a singular correspondence
in the probabilities of primeval chaos when the
"earth was without form and void, and darkness
was upon the face of the deep," and the recog-
nized geological order of the creation or evolution
of the flora, sea and land, animals, and, lastly, of
man, with the narrative in the first chapter of
Genesis, affording good reasons for believing that
the narrative of the creative evolution was inspired
of God.

The sages of ancient Egypt, Persia, and Baby-
lon, from whose writings and traditions Genesis

3o6 Evolution of Religions

was doubtless largely compiled, were not in all
probability thoroughly acquainted with the struc-
ture of the earth, and the indications of the geo-
logic ages. Apart from the narrative of creation
in the first chapter of Genesis, the Bible antedi-
luvian history, as well as its chronology, is, evi-
dently, largely mythical, and the same may be
said of its narratives down to the time of Moses.
After his time, they have more coherence and reli-
ability, though undoubtedly many of its pages,
down even to the period of the Davidic dynasty,
are mixed with myths, legends, and fables, and
yet greatly superior to all sketches and fragments
of all other ancient histories of that remote period,
which are generally entirely imreliable. The
Davidic empire was the golden age of Israel.
David and Solomon were undoubtedly great men
and great patrons of learning and philosophy, and
from that time Hebrew history is generally accu-
rate, though, like all other ancient histories, fre-
quently marred by exaggerated and extraordinary
legends.

Second. It may be regarded as the certain re-
sult of discoveries, by the investigations and pro-
cesses of the Higher Criticism, that Moses did not
write the Pentateuch in its present form, or Book
of Job, usually ascribed to him; that Joshua did
not write the book bearing his name ; that David
did not write the Psalter, but only, at most, a few
of the sacred songs; that Solomon did not write

Summary of Bible Exegesis 307

the Song of Songs or Book of Ecclesiastes, and
only a small portion of the Book of Proverbs;
that Isaiah was the author of none of his Book
of Prophecies beyond the fortieth chapter, and
that most of those, after that chapter, were written
in Babylon during or after the exile ; Jeremiah did
not write the books of Kings or Lamentations;
Ezra did not write the books of Chronicles, Ezra,
or Nehemiah.

Says Dr. Briggs: "The great mass of the Old
Testament was written by authors whose names
or connections with those writings are lost in
oblivion. If this is destroying the Bible, the
Bible is destroyed already. But who tells us those
traditional names were the authors of the Bible?
The Bible itself? The creeds of the churches?
Any reliable historical testimony ? None of these !
Pure conjectural traditions. Nothing more."*

The books of Ruth, Jonah, Esther, and Daniel
are religious historical fictions in prose. The
authors of them are unknown. Ruth is a most
beautiful idyl of ancient Hebrew domestic life
and womanly devotion. Boaz, Ruth, Naomi, are
doubtless genuine historical characters. The
books of Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs
are Hebrew poems, the first a poetic fiction.
Psalms is a collection of Israel's sacred songs,
composed by various authors, including Solomon,
at various periods, and compiled during or after
* " Study of Holy Scripture," p. 287.

3o8 Evolution of Religions

the exile with the other books into one Bible.
The same may be said of Proverbs, i.e., a book of
moral, economic, social, and prudential rules.
None of these nine latter books are probably in-
spired works, excepting only in the sense that les-
sons of the good, pure, and beautiful in everything
and in all books are from God.

Third. Judicially, no miracles of either old or
new dispensation, nor of any other religion, are
literally true, or at least sufficiently authenticated,
or, as Scotch verdicts sometimes are rendered, "not
proven. " Some of those miracles may have been
natural phenomena, exaggerated. Most of them
are undoubtedly mythical or legendary, and were
gathered up from popular superstitions and folk-
lore by the writers of the various biblical books.
Among the most prominent of the legendary
narratives and mythical miracles are:

A. The Noachic Deluge. It is now gener-
ally held by Christian scholars that the Deluge,
as recorded in the Bible, was local and not
universal. Nor does the language of the Bible
necessarily imply that it was universal. The
traditions of such an event — for undoubtedly
such traditions existed, from very ancient
times, in the fabulous histories of Babylon,
China, Greece, Egypt, and India, as well as in
Genesis — may have been based upon the fact
of some great seismic convulsions of the regions

Summary of Bible Exegesis 309

bordering on the Mediterranean, Persian, Red
seas, and the Euphrates River, in very remote
antiquity, whereby the waters may have over-
whelmed the adjacent countries, the seats of
the earliest ci\41izations known on earth. If
the stories of the great longevity of the ante-
diluvian peoples are true, the earth must have
had a vast population at the time of the great
cataclysm if universal, and the story of only
one family being preserved with animals, birds,
and reptiles, gathered from all quarters of the
globe into the ark, is quite imreasonable.^

There are indications on the earth's surface
of the erosions of mountains and hills, and the
filling up of valleys by some great force which
is believed by scientists to have been a glacial
deluge of a period previous to the existence of
man and animals upon earth, and which prob-
ably extended all over the earth. According
to that theory, in the Alesozoic or beginning
of the Cenozoic Age, the whole earth had a
tropical climate and was covered with an
immense tropical vegetation from pole to pole.
Then a period of intense cold followed, in which
all the earth was covered with snows, finally
condensing into glaciers of ice many thousands
of feet in thickness, especially in the polar
regions. Again a change in the temperature
of the earth's atmosphere occurred, and the

' " Narratives of Genesis," by Ryle, p. 112.

3IO Evolution of Religions

vast masses of snow and ice began to melt,
submerging the earth, the vast ocean carrying
on its surface, from the polar regions to the
equatorial, great masses of Arctic ice and rocks,
and crushing through mountains and all ob-
structions in the rush of its mighty waters
towards the equator, uprooting in its course and
carrying on its flood, as well the mighty forests
which had covered the earth and depositing
them in valleys to form the vast beds of coal
and the laboratories of oils and gases which are
found in such almost inexhaustible quantities
in so many coimtries of the world.

I had the great pleasure of hearing the grand
naturalist and scientist, Professor Louis Agassiz,
lecture on the very interesting subject of the
glacial age and theory, in the winter of 1864
at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington,
D.C. When the glacial deluge occurred, if the
theory be true, — and it accounts for many re-
markable changes upon the earth's surface,
which a mere temporary submergence of waters
could not have occasioned, as well as for the
vast formations of coals, which otherwise
would be unaccountable, — it must have been
in a geologic age before the Mosaic chronology,
and the creation of man, for no human being
could have been living upon the earth during
the glacial period, and no remains of men or
animals are found in the great coal formations.

Summary of Bible Exegesis 311

So that the glacial deluge could not have had
the remotest connection in time or fact with the
Noachian Deluge.

B. The passage of the Israelites through the
wall of waters of the Red Sea and the river
Jordan. These events have already been suf-
ficiently commented on. There is no evidence
whatever in Egyptian records or monuments,
as there would have been, if true, corroborating
the Bible accounts, that they occurred, as
stated, in Exodus. Possibly the Israelites
may have passed over some marshy grounds
bordering the sea on its northern extremity,
on their migration from Egypt, and doubtless
did at some point ford the river Jordan in their
passage into Canaan. No Egyptian annals or
records of any kind have ever been found
commemorating, or even referring to, the pas-
sage of the Red Sea, although plenty of annals
and monumental inscriptions of that date, and
especially of the monarch who then ruled over
Egypt, still exist. Herodotus, the Greek his-
torian, who traveled in Egypt about 450 B.C.,
and who wrote fully of the history, religion, and
customs of the people, makes no mention of it.
Nor does Manetho, the native Egyptian his-
torian, who wrote about 275 b.c. The mummy
of the Pharaoh, Meneptha, son of the great
Rameses II, in whose reign the ten plagues of
Egypt are said to have taken place, and who

312 Evolution of Religions

was overwhelmed with his army in the Red
Sea, according to the song of Miriam,^ is now
said to be in the British Museum in London.
It was found in the sepulchers of the kings of
Egypt in one of the pyramids, and no hiero-
glyphs or inscriptions of any kind on his sar-
cophagus, or tomb, have any reference to these
wonderful events. Indeed, as most of the older
books of the Bible were originally poems, it is a
question whether many of the miraculous stories
were not merely important events gilded with
the extravagance and license of oriental im-
agery, and not penned as literal statements of
facts.

Few intelligent persons now, Jews or Christ-
ians, believe that the story of the sun and moon
standing still at the command of Joshua was
ever intended as a statement of fact. It is
evidently an exaggerated poetic fiction as a
finale of a song of triumph for the great victory
over Israel's foes.

The context of the story of the passage of
the Red Sea, the "strong east wind" blowing
the shallow waters of the marshy bayou at
its northern extremity into the deeper sea and
thus making a way for the Hebrew host, shows
that the march of the people on foot, without
animals or vehicles, divested of any poetic
embellishment, was an extraordinary, but not

* Exodus, ch. XV, v. 19.

Summary of Bible Exegesis 313

supernatural occurrence. The Egyptians with
their horses and chariots following after them
over the boggy ground may have been over-
taken and drowned by the returning tide after
the subsidence of the simoom/ And so divested
of the garniture of florid Asiatic poetic imagery
and supernatural embellishments, doubtless
most of the miracles of the Scriptures may be
similarly resolved into natural occurrences.

C. The story of the manna falling every
morning, and the flocks of quails coming every
evening and alighting by millions around the
camps of the Israelites, to be taken for their
food, and indeed, with the manna, their only
food, during their forty years' wanderings in
the desert of northern Arabia. And also of the
stream of water gushing from a rock at the
command of Moses, following and meandering
around with them through the deserts and over
the moimtains for the same period. One ac-
coimt ^ says this stream burst out from the rock
in the beginning of their migrations, but another
and later accoiint of the same miracle, possibly
from a different author,^ says the stream began
its flow near the close of their joumeyings.
Now, did the stream without any channel run
up hill and down valleys and over moimtains
and burning sands, or had engineering, cuttings

' Exodus, ch. xiv, v. 21. ' Exodus, ch. xvii.

* Numbers, ch. xx.

3^4 Evolution of Religions

and fillings, or embanldngs to be done? It is
evidently a fable, as is the story of the manna
and the quails, a generic product of that land
of wonderful legends. No earthly commemo-
ration of the poetic fiction is to be found in the
topography, geology, or natural scenery of
the country, or in any contemporary Baby-
lonian or Egyptian history.

Upon no rules of legal evidence of any his-
torical events can these narratives be sustained.
To believe them literally is to fling all evidence
to the winds, and be ready to believe in every-
thing supernatural told us, simply because it
comes in the guise of religion.

D. The story of Balaam and the ass. This
is so utterly absurd that one wonders if it was
not extracted from " Baron Munchausen," or the
" Arabian Nights." It is incomprehensible that
millions of sensible human beings have for ages
believed the story without a scintilla of proof.
In fact it is so utterly unnatural and absurd as to
be incapable of proof. The story of the walls of
Jericho falling prone of themselves before the en-
circling Hebrew army, using no arms, or engines
of war for their reduction, but simply blowing
upon rams' horns, is nearly as silly as the story
of Balaam and the ass. Moreover, consider
the x'Ylmighty Father commanding the Israelite
intruders, against whom the people of Jericho
had never raised an arm, to slaughter every

Summary of Bible Exegesis 315

man, woman, and little child in the doomed
city, excepting the harlot Rahab and her
relatives. That command alone is sufficient
evidence that the legend is not true. No
wonder that the thousand and one religions of
earth with all their legions of miracles, saints
and angels, devils and fiends, have had coimtless
millions of votaries, when intelligent cultured
people even now believe such legends as literal
truths, and not fabulous or allegorical. One
can only wonder at the supineness of human
credulity when reason vacates her throne over
the mind at the behests of priestcraft and
superstition.

E. The phenomena of the sun and moon
standing still. Really of the earth and moon
stopping abruptly for a day in their revolu-
tions round the sun at the command of Joshua !
Enough, methinks, has been said in these pages
on this subject already. But we will hazard
a few more considerations on the stupendous
story. It was written, most probably, as an
exaggerated poetic fancy or exultation over the
defeat of the Canaanitish army. Most liberal
Christians and advanced Bible scholars believe
the story was written by Joshua, or whoever
was its author, as a poetic fiction. It certainly
was original, and so extravagant that no other
poet has ever emulated such a flight of fancy, or
is ever likely to do so. It is simply amazing

3i6 Evolution of Religions

that it ever was believed, as it has been for so
many centuries by Jews, Christians, and
Mohammedans, as a hteral fact, and especially
since the Copemican system of the revolution
of the earth, moon, and planets around the
Sim has been imiversally recognized as correct.
Standing as a supposed fact, this story alone
casts discredit upon all Bible miracles. The
belief of Christians in it, as well as the beHef
in such miracles as Balaam and the ass, and of
the story of the devils going into the herd of
swine, is a stronger, nay, an overwhelming
argument against the authenticity of those and
all other miracles, a stronger argument than the
mere pubHcation of them, for these may have
been merely written as allegories or popular
myths, but the beHef in them as facts shows
that the credulity of human beings in stories
of the supernatural is so great as to make
ordinary human testimony about such matters
utterly worthless. No amount of evidence can
prove such absurd stories to be true. Intelli-
gent reason recoils at them. It is derogatory
to the attributes of God to suppose He would
lend His power to the performance of such
miracles. Any person who can beHeve such
stories as literal facts, can easily beHeve any-
thing whatever of a miraculous character taught
by the books or priests of his reHgion. Possibly
God, in His omnipotence, could so arrest the

Summary of Bible Exegesis 317

movements of all the bodies of the whole solar
system, and perhaps also of all the suns and
their attendant planets of the whole iiniverse,
which most likely such a miracle as Joshua's
would involve, and might suspend all the laws
of momentum, gravitation, and attraction, but
there is no evidence whatever that He did so,
and the probabilities are coimtless billions to
one that He never did so. And if He did so,
in Joshua's case, what for ? Where would be the
relation between such a stupendous exhibition
of Almighty power and the question of extermi-
nating a few thousands more or less of God's
children, even though they were Israel's ene-
mies? Such a miracle would, it seems, wreck
the imiverse! Astronomy teaches that God
never worked such a miracle in the case of even
one of the most insignificant of the heavenly
bodies. But as a mere poetic fiction or alle-
gory, the story is harmless, and such it probably
is.

F. The slaughter of five htmdred thousand
soldiers of the army of Israel in one battle by
the army of Judah. This has been hereinbefore
sufficiently discussed. Also the destruction of
one htmdred and fifty thousand men, the entire
army of Sennacherib, King of Assyria, in one
night by an angel of God.^

G. The story of Jonah. Certainly an ex-
travagant allegory, but under that guise incul-

» Mitchell's " Isaiah," p. 45.

3i8 Evolution of Religions

eating the grand moral truth that God cares for
all men, a truth much needed by the Israelites.
Instead of the poem having been written very
anciently, as used to be believed, the best
biblical critics now assign to its composition a
date during the exile or subsequently.

H. The drama of Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego, and of Nebuchadnezzar's seven
times heated furnace in the plain of Dura.
Very grand, but there is no proof of it histori-
cally, or otherwise, which there ought to be if
true. Berosus, a Chaldean priest of high
character, wrote a history of Chaldea about the
year 300 B.C., not very long after the alleged
miracle. Many fragments of his work exist, but
they contain no reference to the wonderful
event. No mention is made of Daniel or of the
three friends who were cast into the furnace.
They, as well as Daniel, were doubtless fictitious
personages. The book was evidently written
long after Nebuchadnezzar's time, and sub-
sequently to the death of Alexander the Great,
for it contains frequent allusions, veiled under
the guise of predictive prophecy, to the great
Macedonian conqueror, and the successors to
his dismembered empire. It was probably
written by a Jewish rabbi, but is full of
much later Christian interpolations. It is
as great a favorite, almost, of millennial
dreamers and Second Adventists, as the Apoc-

Summary of Bible Exegesis 319

alypse of Revelation, and equally as iinsub-
stantial.

If we must believe everything that comes
down to us in so-called sacred books without
other evidence than the books themselves, then
we might as well believe the absurd fables of
the Hindoo Vedas, and the Finland Kalavelas,
as well as the ancient legends of Zoroastrianism,
Buddhism, and Islamism. Advanced Bible
scholars now generally regard the Book of
Daniel as a religious romance written to en-
force great moral truths, and especially a belief
in the absolute certainty of protection and
safety for those who trust in God. There is not
a particle of commemorative or corroborative
evidence of the furnace story, or of Daniel
having been thrown into a den of lions and
afterwards coming out imharmed, or of such a
person having at any time been made the chief
prince or deputy ruler of the kingdom of
Persia.

/. The Book of Esther, Queen of Ahasuerus,
King of Persia, is a romance pure and simple,
with little, if any, substratum of facts. It
was written probably to enforce the same moral
ideas as the Book of Daniel. There are extant
contemporary Persian and Babylonian histories
of those times, and not one word of the incidents
related in either Daniel or Esther is foimd in
them. No such personage as Esther probably

320 Evolution of Religions

lived. Certainly the events mentioned in the
book are such as no historian of ancient Persia
would fail to notice. Can we believe that
first many Jews, and subsequently seventy-five
thousand Persians, were murdered, as the out-
come of the Agagite conspiracy, and that no
historian would record the story of Queen
Esther, and such turmoils and slaughter ? How
came Haman, the Agagite,^ with his family and
race to be so numerous and powerful in distant
Persia, when, according to the First Book of
Samuel, the last of that tribe of people, so hated
by Israel, and Israel's God, had, centuries
before, been utterly exterminated by Saul, King
of Israel, and Samuel the Prophet, as they had
once before that time been nearly exterminated
by Joshua in the wilderness of Arabia ? ^ The
destruction of Haman and the last of the tribe
of the Amalekites seems to have been the great
sensational feature of the drama which the
writer of the book was working up for the
delectation of the Jews, the hereditary enemies
of the Amalekites, from whom the Agagites
sprung.

J. Jesus Christ through His mysterious soul,
birth, and divine endowments of wisdom and
power, was spiritually Son of God, and naturally
bom of Joseph and Mary, was also Son of man,
and, through Joseph, of the^lineage and blood

» First Book of Samuel, ch. xv, v. 8. * Exodus, ch. xvii.

Summary of Bible Exegesis 321

of King David, thus uniting in himself all the
attributes and characteristics predicted of the
" Messiah " by the prophets. He never gave any
indorsement to the legend of the theophanic
conception, nor was it ever taught until many
years after His Crucifixion, and then probably
only as it was evolved in the halo with which
time and love and veneration had enshrined
Him. Neither of the Gospels, in present form,
was in existence until some time after his death,
probably in the second century. Some of the
Apostolic Epistles speak of a "Gospel," or
"the Gospel," but none of the Gospels of
Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and hence they
must have been compiled after all the Epistles
were written. The citations of Matthew and
Luke, from Old Testament books, are inappli-
cable, but show the apparent necessity to their
minds of sustaining the legend by them, and
that, without the support of such references,
the story of the virginal conception would
hardly have gained credence even in that age
of supernatural beliefs.

St. John in the first chapter of his Gospel
evidently speaks of a soul conception, bom
with the body, and it was evidently of this
spirit birth in and with his natural body that
Jesus made the mysterious declaration of His
having come from God and that before "Abra-
ham was, I am." His mother Mary, wor-

322 Evolution of Religions

shiped by the Catholic Church as the " Mother
of God," contrary to the divine teaching of
the eternity and self-existence of God, not-
withstanding the angelic announcement which
is said to have been made to her of His birth,
never seemed to realize that Jesus was other
than her and Joseph's son. In the absence, as
hereinbefore stated, of any evidence that Mary
was a daughter of King David's line, if Joseph
was not Jesus' father, then the citations and
references from the prophets as to the birth of
a Messiah or Prince of David's blood were
inapplicable to Jesus.

There are no reasons for supposing that Jesus
knew of the story of His miraculous birth.
He never, even remotely, alluded to it, but
seemed to teach that He had been endowed with
a preexistent soul which came from and had
been with His Father God. He was aware of
the universal recognition given Him by all the
people who knew Him from childhood as the
son of "Joseph," the carpenter, and no word or
intimation did He ever give that such recog-
nition of Himself, or of His brothers and sisters,
was not correct. Romans and Galatians teach
distinctly that Jesus was of natural parentage
and birth.' Had it not been thought essential,
during the second century, when the Gospels
were compiled, in order to sustain the atone-

^ Romans, ch. i, v. 3. Galatians, ch. iv, v. 4.

Summary of Bible Exegesis 323

merit theory, that Jesus should have been bom
immaculate, the idea of His theophanic con-
ception would never have been originated.
With the eariiest worshipers of the one true
God, the ancient Zoroastrians, disbelieving in the
virtue or necessity of any blood atonement, or
any other atonement or sacrifice for sins, except-
ing by the repentance of the sinner himself, and
his pardon thereupon by the only infinite re-
deemer, we must, of necessity, believe the story
is mythical. In addition we note here that the
two Gospels of Matthew and Luke speak of
the "Espousals" of Joseph and Mary before
the conception of Jesus, and of no subsequent
marriage, so they were really husband and wife
at the time, as they were always afterwards
recognized.

K. The narrative of the temptation of Jesus
by Satan has already been sufficiently criticised
in these pages. There is not, and from the
nature of the case, could not possibly have
been, any external evidence to support the story,
and internally the reasons for discarding it
from the Bible as untrue and sacrilegious are,
we think, overwhelming.

L. The story of the angel descending from
heaven at certain times to disturb the waters
of the Pool of Bethseda, in St. John's Gospel,*
for the purpose of imparting miraculous proper-

1 Gospel of St. John, ch. v, vs. 2-9.

324 Evolution of Religions

ties to the waters, has been discarded from the
revised version of the New Testament by the
able scholars who made the revision as an in-
terpolation. The story of the woman taken in
adultery, and Jesus' conversation with her, was
also virtually rejected by the revisionists as an
interpolation, but permitted to remain in the
Gospel, probably on account of its lesson of mercy
and repentance. We merely refer to these two
comparatively unimportant incidents to help
illustrate to what extent interpolations in the
original Gospels and other biblical books in the
early ages were possible and probable, when
the fanaticism, bigotry, or peculiar sectarian
views of the translator, redactor, or copyist
made it seem to him advisable in the interest
or creed of his sect or party.

M. The story of the legion of devils being
cast out of the insane man by Jesus and receiv-
ing from Him permission to go into a herd of
swine nearby, and actually entering into them
and driving them into the sea, is so absurd and
out of place in a book of divine ethics, that one
can only wonder how it ever got into the evange-
list's biography. It is imdoubtedly from its
silly character an interpolation by some copyist
who had heard or seen the legend and believed
it. It ought to have been discarded by the
revisionists and put into Rev. Dr. Pick's col-
lection of Apocryphal legends of the Savior

Summary of Bible Exegesis 325

once believed in, but now -universally discarded.
Such foolish tales disfigure the Good Book, and
tend to impair even the force of its grand moral
lessons. This and a few other miracles, besides
several others of the same quality herein
referred to, should have been expurgated from
the Bible by the revision committees as hardly
worthy to be retained therein, even as curiosities
of ancient literature and beliefs. As old
legends they are valueless and unattractive
even as supposed allegories or myths, really
answering no apparent good purpose what-
ever.

N. No evidence whatever has ever been
foimd corroborating the story of the super-
natural darkness which is said to have enveloped
the world at the time of Jesus' Crucifixion, or in
proof of the statement in St. Matthew^ that
many of the dead in the sepulchers around
Jerusalem arose from their tombs and were
seen by their relatives and friends in the city.
This was a most astonishing circumstance, if
true, and it certainly would have been at once
heralded all over Jerusalem and the surround-
ing world. Was it so done? We answer no,
because it was never heard of, or published
elsewhere than in Matthew's Gospel. Why did
not the other three evangelists mention the
amazing occurrence? Why did not the Apos-

1 St. Matthew, ch. xxvii, vs. 52, 53.

326 Evolution of Religions

tolic Epistles refer to it as corroborative of
mortal resurrection?

Dr. Briggs' "argumentum ad silentiam" in
this case is alone sufficient to refute the story.
It is a legend pure and simple. Josephus forty
or fifty years afterwards wrote his book of Jewish
antiquities and certainly from his silence had
never heard the story, nor of the earthquake.
He was a believer in miracles, for he indorses all
the old Bible miraculous stories, and would have
undoubtedly referred to these had they been
commonly talked of. He was a boy of eighteen
or twenty years of age at the time of the Cruci-
fixion. If the story of the resurrected dead
saints are true, whatever became of their bodies
again? After the excitement attending upon the
Crucifixion was over, did they visit Jesus to honor
Him, and then go back to their lonely tombs to
become dust and ashes again ? Or did they remain
on earth for days or years and finally die natural
deaths a second time, or become "wandering
Jews" forever, like the hero of Eugene Sue's
celebrated romance of that title? At least, it
would naturally be supposed that having thus
cast off the garments of death and been resurrected
to mortal life again they would certainly remain
on earth to greet the Savior after His resurrection,
or possibly stay and be with Him until His
Ascension, and by analogy with what we are told

4498

Summary of Bible Exegesis 327

the holy dead will do after reanimation at the gen-
eral resurrection, ascend with Him from Mount
OHvet before the eyes of Jesus' wondering dis-
ciples. But they are never further heard of or
noticed by the evangelist. We are left in mystery
and wonder to imagine what became of those
resurrected saints after they were seen and con-
versed with by their living friends in Jerusalem.
Presumably those reanimated saints, from the
tenor of the narrative, returned to their graves
soon after Jesus' resurrection, there again to
resume the ashes and habiliments of death. If
so, what was the object of their temporary resur-
rection and resumption of mortal garb, and what
good did they accomplish? Did they appear in
Jerusalem in the cerements of the tomb or in the
garb of the day, and if so, how were their garments
furnished them? They were probably Jewish
saints who knew not Jesus. Why were they
reanimated and how many were they? Matthew
says: " Many bodies arose." ^ And why were the
friends and relations who saw and doubtless con-
versed w4th those reanimated dead, in the holy
city, forever mute and dumb about the inter-
views? Not one of them ever told the story of
the astounding visit of their, maybe, long ago
departed friends, and of the secrets of the unseen
world, imparted by them, so far as the world has
ever been informed. Matthew, alone of the

^ Matthew, ch. xxvii, vs. 52-53.

328 Evolution of Religions

evangelists, tells the story of the resurrected
dead, and he is silent on all those other questions.

From the manner and context of its inter-
jection into his Gospel, it looks like an interpolated
legend, added at some time, in some compilation,
by an enthusiast or fanatic. We have read many
lives of Christ by orthodox writers, and in not one
of them are the questions naturally suggested by
the story in Matthew of the resurrected dead ever
even broached. Methinks, if the story were true,
the reanimated saints would have long remained
in Jerusalem as an irrefutable object lesson in
themselves to all the people of the certainty of
resurrection of the dead and immortality. In no
way otherwise could such a lesson have been
given, and it would forever have silenced the
disbelieving Sadducees, as it would have abso-
lutely attested the truth of the Pharisees and
Jesus' teaching of the resurrection. But the
saints come and go for a few hours possibly, in
silent procession, and then like Hamlet's ghost
"troop back to their tombs," and that is all.

Now why are people required by the Christian
ministry to believe such unnatural and entirely
unauthenticated legends? Is it simply because
we find them in our Bible, and because they have
been there for centuries (many of them of dense
ignorance), originally written there we know
not certainly when, where, or by whom? Or
because, like the silversmiths of Ephesus, they

Summary of Bible Exegesis 329

realize that the great orthodox temple would fall
and crumble, and their occupation be gone, if
such stories were classed as mere legends ? Where
is the evidence, or even the probabiUties, of the
truth of such stories? The masses of the intelli-
gent Jews, who then lived, did not beheve the
supernatural incidents said to have been attendant
upon the Crucifixion, even if they then heard of
them. We are told those who indited them were
inspired and could only write the truth. But who
were they, and how do those who tell us they were
inspired know any more about the fact of inspira-
tion than those to whom they tell it? Their
Gospels have many differences. Such is the claim
which the priesthood of every religion has always
urged to support all reHgions and all miracles.
Out of a dozen or more Gospels of Jesus' life by
as many various authors, the four of Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John were only adopted as
canonical by a coimcil of bishops in the fourth
century a.d. Several of those other Gospels are
still used in Armeni^ Egypt, and Abyssinia. But
suppose, as we believe, those who originally penned
the books of the Bible, no matter who they were,
and whether they were the authors whose names
are given to the various books or not, were inspired
to teach of God and His attributes and His moral
laws, and those lessons only, and incidentally of
their own volitions, wrote the biographical and
historical records, why necessarily must all they

S3^ Evolution of Religions

wrote about mere human matters be regarded
as inspired of God? Certainly if inspiration was
given holy men only to teach of God and man's
duties to Him and their fellow-men, there was no
especial reason why it should be given to them to
impart scientific, astronomical, geological, geo-
graphic, or historic knowledge. In truth, the
Bible itself shows it was not given for such pur-
poses. It was not plenary inspiration for all
purposes, but only special inspiration to impart
religious truths. This applies as well to other
religions and to their histories and miracles as to
ours. What good to the world, excepting for
merely educational advantages, would divine
enlightenment in reference to history, sciences,
poetry, traditions, etc., be? Why was it neces-
sary for the welfare of men that the ancient sages
should have such universal inspiration? At any
rate the Bible clearly shows they did not have it.
The knowledge they could thus have imparted,
as inspired, might have made men more intelligent,
but not necessarily any better.

The Bible nowhere teaches that its kings,
lawgivers, prophets, and priests had universal
inspiration. Many of the laws and ordinances of
Moses prove in themselves that he was not inspired
as a lawgiver, or even as the author of ordinances
and forms of religious worship. The missions of
the prophets and priests were evidently solely
to teach moral and religious truths. When they

Summary of Bible Exegesis 331

iindertook to write history and teach astronomy,
geography, etc., the books show they were fre-
quently in error. So Jesus taught of Moses.
We may say absolutely, upon the warrant of the
Bible itself, that the only test of inspiration is
exalted goodness and the divine truths taught
of God and the relations of men to Him and to
each other, and such inspiration was only given
of God for His glory and for human welfare.
Hence miracles, if permitted by Deity for attesta-
tion of inspiration, would be enacted and be
visible in all ages and all countries for such
purposes, and their authenticity would be such as
none could question or disbelieve. God, we
believe, in His all-wise providence, has never
permitted any miracles excepting as they are
foimd in His creation and works of nature, which
all can see and explore. The mission of inspira-
tion is to teach men higher and grander moral
truths than they can learn merely from nature.

" Holy men of old spake as they were moved by
the Holy Spirit," so says St. Peter, so the Bible
everywhere teaches. But why should the Holy
Spirit undertake the mission of inspiring men of
the things they could learn as well from their
fellows or could teach them as well from their own
knowledge? Hence in its historical and bio-
graphical narratives, its chronology, astronomy,
and geography, many of its civil laws and social
and domestic regulations, purporting to have

332 Evolution of Religions

come directly from God, we know there are many
errors, and that inspiration cannot be predicated
thereof, despite the dogma of orthodox infalli-
bility. We think we have given many good
reasons in these pages for this assertion. God
knows we only seek the truth, and prayerfully
we have sought it. We affirm the sufficiency of
the Scriptures for moral light, and that any honest
intelligent man or woman endowed with ordinary
knowledge and common sense has as patent a
right to judge of biblical infallibility and the
truth of everything in its various books and
Epistles, as any other man, be he pope, cardinal,
bishop, or priest, and no man or body of men,
council, synod, or propaganda, has authority
from God to pronounce "Anathema Maranatha"
on any human being for anything in religion he
or she may honestly believe or teach, if no moral
laws or social proprieties are infringed. Any
declaration to the contrary, by any ecclesiastical
authority, is but an arrogant assumption by fel-
low-men and an infringement of religious liberty.
God never authorized any mortal to be styled
by his fellow-mortals, "Holy Father, His Grace,
His Reverence, Lord Cardinal, Archbishop, or
Bishop," nor any of such assumed dignitaries to
sit in judgment upon anyone's religious belief
or mode of worshiping God. Each human being
is accountable to Him alone for such matters,
and any attempt to influence religious belief

Summary of Bible Exegesis 333

otherwise than by argument and persuasion is
persecution. If reverence is ever due to men at
all in a religious sense, it should be accorded only
to the pure, good, and imselfish, be they of high
or low estate.

We do know that many things in the Bible are
not of God, that many of its miracles are but
legends, and some of its laws are unjust. Their
character and environments alone prove them
such. Some of the miracles have doubtless a
substratum of fact, but it is often difficult to
separate the fact from the allegorical or fabulous
environment. There are historical statements in
it which are imtrue or exaggerated; some con-
tradictory narratives both of which cannot be
correct; some laws, rites, and doctrines contrary
to our human sense of truth and justice. Hence
we are required by the Bible's grand general pre-
cepts as M^ell as by our manhood and moral sense,
to examine and sift, as we can, all its evidences
for ourselves, "to search the Scriptures" and
believe only as our reason and conscience are
convinced. There is now abundant evidence
external, as well as in the Bible itself, to support
those statements, owing mainly to the labors of
many great scholars in the past hundred years,
showing conclusively that, however inspired and
inerrant its ethics may be, its historical, chrono-
logical, biographical, supernatural, and scien-
tific teachings were not inspired, but had in them

334 Evolution of Religions

many errors. Many of the Mosaic laws and all
his sacrificial rites, if indeed Moses was their
author, which is very doubtful, we aver, without
hesitation, from their nature only, never came
from God.*

Jesus Christ was, we believe, bom of human
parentage, with the gift of a nature divine, the
greatest, best, and most highly endowed being
of whom history has any record. There can be
no doubt of His life, character, and teachings ; the
evidence is overwhelming. He was truth personi-
fied, and all He did and all His life was in accord
with His character and mission as the Savior of
men, by redeeming them from their sins and
follies. No other being fills the place in history
He always had and ever will fill. Yet from His
own hand we have not a line. All His works and
sermons are hearsay, traditional, and were trans-
mitted to the world by His followers. Why it
was that His words in His own hand, in their
original purity, were not given to the world is a
mystery. Much controversy over them would
apparently have been avoided, and many irrational
creeds would never have been formulated. He
knew best. But after His departure from the
world it soon became filled with wonderful

* Brown's " Chronicles in Dictionary of the Bible," vol.
i.P-397; Sayce's " Early History of the Hebrews," 1897 edi-
tion, p. 146; H. E. Ryle, " Narratives of Genesis," 1892 edi-
tion, p. 87; Julius Wellhausen's " History of Israel."

Summary of Bible Exegesis 335

legends of supernatural works performed by Him,
and these increased naturally in that ignorant
and superstitious age in number, variety, and
extravagance as the years passed on, and many of
them, but only a tithe of those current, were in
the generations afterwards interwoven into the
Gospels, with some dilutions of His teachings, by
the evangeHsts, who adopted the current beliefs
of His supernatural works in their day. Many
Gospels were published, some very extravagant,
which still wholly or partly exist. Whether any
of the miracles were realities, we do not know.
Some certainly were not. None have been
proven by any external testimony, not even the
testimony of the Apostolic Epistles. But in
subsequent ages they were all believed, because
foimd in the Gospels, just as the followers of all
other religions beUeved in their sacred books,
with all their miracles, and just as the Mormons
now believe in the miracles of the Book of Mormon,
which occurred, if at all, thousands of years before
that book was ever heard of.

No authenticity to miracles can be given them
by human belief, foimded on merely human
story. There is no use to mince words on this
subject. Men in all ages have been prone to
invent and believe wonderful stories about great
warriors, statesmen, poets, and especially foimders
of new religions, are so now, and were vastly
more credulous in ancient times when natural

S3^ Evolution of Religions

sciences and true philosophy were unknown and
when belief in the supernatural, and, we may add,
the incredibly supernatural, was universal.
Angels and archangels, devils, genii, devas,
witches, hobgoblins, and ghosts, in the popular
belief, used to literally swarm in the world, and
many persons had, as was believed, an attendant
angel or demon through life.

Perhaps the writer of this book may be so
normally, or it may be, so abnormally constituted,
that he cannot believe in such beings or in their
manifestations either in the past or present time,
but if so, and his reasoning thereabout is erro-
neous, it is his misfortune and not his fault, for he
has humbly and earnestly sought not only earthly
light, but also divine guidance all his life. He has
carefully read and studied the Bible, every word
of it, in all its books a number of times, many parts
of it, especially the Gospels, very often, and has
also studied carefully many of the best works on
all sides of the great questions considered in these
pages. One, and it seems to us the most impor-
tant of all the Bible stories of the supernatural,
may be true literally, and we should like to believe
it, because of its far-reaching and most important
consequences, because it is surroiinded by many
circumstances indicating its truth, and because we
believe absolutely in Jesus Christ and immortal-
ity. We mean the Resurrection of Jesus, and the
story of His life on earth after His Crucifixion.

Summary of Bible Exegesis 337

He may not have been seen in His human body
after His death, — that probably remained in the
tomb, or was in some way disposed of by friends
or enemies, — but He may have been visible in
His "alter ego," His immortal self, in His spirit.
If so, He was a demonstration of immortality in
being permitted to be seen by and converse with
His disciples after His death. He lived, of course,
after His Crucifixion. So must all behevewho
believe in a future life, and there was no super-
naturalism in that fact, but only in the fact that
God permitted His disciples to see Him, mortal
eyes permitted to see the immortal, mortals
permitted to converse with the immortal.

We know not where the soul goes after the death
of the body. It may go immediately to God, to be
with Him in " His Holy of holies," or to some other
world of the imiverse, or remain for a season with
relatives and friends about its late earthly home.
Jesus we know lived somewhere after His Cruci-
fixion and natural death, and He may have, and
there is really nothing astounding in the fact that
He remained, as we are told He did, forty days on
earth and was about and with His disciples.
Certainly some being or apparition they saw and
conversed with, whom they believed to be their
late Teacher and Master, and why should it not
be He? It was, if so, a supernatural vision,
requiring no change of their natural organs of
sight, possibly, but only that a divine illumination

338 Evolution of Religions

revealed Jesus to them, and naturally they sa\\
Him if He was resurrected in flesh. All other
miraculous stories m the Scriptures are naught
in importance and grandeur compared to this
one, for if Hterally true, then by Jesus' Resurrec-
tion and sojourn of forty days on earth thereafter,
He absolutely brought "hfe and immortality
to light." According to the Bible, other dead
had been resurrected bodily before: Samuel
the prophet, by the witch of the wilderness of
Endor ; the sons of the widow at Zarephath and
the woman of Shunem, by the old prophets
Elijah and Elisha ; and even one man was brought
to life by mere contact with the dead EHsha's
bones.^ Jesus Himself and the Apostles Peter
and Paul are said to have brought the dead to
life, but these miracles had no corroborating
history, and the reanimated subjects like the dead
saints of Jerusalem, who are said to have come out
of their tombs after Jesus' Resurrection and
appeared on the streets, had no subsequent
confirmative history and were never seen or heard
of afterwards, excepting indeed one subsequent
incidental mention of Lazarus. St. Paul says
that Jesus was the first man raised from the dead,^
and emphasized the same declaration by repeat-
ing it and adding, "Jesus had preeminence as the
beginning, the firstborn from the dead."^

» II Kings, ch. xiii, v. 21. * St. Paul's Acts, ch. xxvi, v. 23.

' Colossians, ch. i, v. 18.

Summary of Bible Exegesis 339

If these declarations of the Apostle be true,
then all the other stories in the Bible of resurrected
dead are fables, excepting the Resurrection of
Jesus, But Jesus was seen or beheved to have
been seen by many of His disciples, some of whom
long years afterw^ards, in the Apostolic writings
which are undoubtedly genuine, testify that they
saw and conversed with him during forty days
after His Resurrection, and then saw Him go
away into the empyrean above them. Among
all the early Christians, including all those who
lived in and about Jerusalem at the time, there
was never expressed a dissent of doubt or un-
belief in the story, although other differences
early sprang up about His acts and teachings.
The context of the Gospel narratives and St.
Paul teach that Jesus' natural body was never
seen again by His disciples after His burial,^ and
if seen at all, He was seen as the incorporeal,
immortal, disembodied Jesus in human form
whom God permitted His devoted followers to
see, associate, and converse with. He was not
evidently the same being of flesh and blood after
His Resurrection as before. " Flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven," and
"the first man, Adam, was made a living soul,
the last Adam (or Jesus) was made a quicken-
ing spirit."^

* I Corinthians, ch. xv.

' I Corinthians, ch. xv, vs. 45-50.

340 Evolution of Religions

Jesus said to Mary of Magdala on the morning
of His Resurrection, "Touch me not, for I have
not yet ascended to my Father and your Father,
my God and your God!" What could His future
ascension have to do with her touching Him if
mortal? He did not want her to be distressed
and alarmed by attempting to touch a visible
spirit ! On the same day He walked with two of
His disciples sixty furlongs or ten miles to Emmaus
and they held much converse on the way, but knew
Him not imtil He suddenly vanished as a spirit
from their sight.* A natural body resurrected from
death would scarcely walk that distance in a few
hours after Resurrection. On two subsequent occa-
sions, Jesus came into rooms where His apostles
were holding meetings with closed doors, \m-
annoxmced and imseen, until He spoke to them.
Why was this, and why did St. John note His ex-
traordinary and mysterious appearance,^ if not to
indicate that Jesus' coming thus was supernatural?
It is true that He is said to have, on two occasions,
eaten with His disciples during the forty days He
was on earth after His Resurrection, and that the
Apostle Thomas is said to have touched the scars
on His wounded hands and sides. These inci-
dents seem inconsistent with the mere spiritual
theory of His being, subsequent to the Resur-
rection, but they may, and probably are, merely
legendary embellishments.

* Luke, ch. xxiv, vs. 13-36.
' St. John, ch. XX, vs. 19-36

Summary of Bible Exegesis 341

Of course, change from incorporeal to bodily-
presence, as indicated by these latter stories, if
real, would be supernatural. We know Jesus
existed, lived a God -like life, and died on the cross
for man. To believers in immortality, it should
seem no wise unnatural for the Son of God as an
immortal to live on earth in His spiritual being
after mortal death, to be with His disciples for a
time, and to be seen by them. God permitted
Him thus to demonstrate to them the eternal
lessons He had taught them. We shall doubt-
less all see in the future life with eyes resembling
and counterparts of our mortal eyes. It mattered
not that Jesus, while in His natural life, fed five
thousand people with five loaves and two fishes.
It mattered not that He raised the dead and
healed the sick. Those miracles proved nothing,
excepting that He was gifted of God with super-
natural powers, as other prophets of Israel before
Him had been reputed to be, and in fully as great
degree. Elijah and Elisha had centuries before
raised the dead and healed the sick as Jesus did.
But in all those miracles, if facts, they simply
dealt with the mortal and with time; there was
lacking the demonstration of immortality and
eternity. The appearance of Samuel's ghost to
Saul at the bidding of the witch of Endor was a
sort of demonstration, but it was inconclusive,
and the story had no attestation. But if the
life and the ministry of Jesus, as narrated by the

342 Evolution of Religions

evangelists, and especially His post-Crucifixion
life are true, then Jesus gave that complete and
perfect demonstration. He literally "brought life
and immortality to light. " It is the seal to and the
climax of all the Bible teaches. If not true, and
especially His Resurrection and after-life, then
the Bible, our Bible, is no better, nor any more
authority, than others of the world's bibles now
existing, excepting as its portrayals of God, and its
teachings to humanity, may be best and purest.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DIVINE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE

DR. BRIGGS in his " Study of Holy Scripture "
says : * " The history of the worid is, as Loes-
sing shows, the divine education of our race, and
every nation has its share in that instruction and
contributes its quota of experience to the suc-
cessive generations. The nations of the modem
world have all come into line with their inter-
play of forces, making the problem more complex
and wonderful. The old nations of the Orient,
China, Japan, and India, with Africa and the
islands of the ocean, share in that education and
service. The world is one in origin, in training,
in destiny. There is force in Renan's remark:
' Jewish history that would have the monopoly of
the miracle, is not a bit more extraordinary than
Greek history. If the supernatural intervention
is necessary to explain the one, then supernatural
intervention is also necessary to explain the
other.'"

And again Dr. Briggs says: "The primitive

sources of Bible history are mythologies, poems,

laws, whether inscribed, written, or traditional,

' Dr. Briggs' " Study of Holy Scripture," p. 537.

343

^44 Evolution of Religions

historical documents, and the use of the historical
imagination." . . . "We may say with reference
to them all/ i.e., biblical histories and writers,
that they did not and could not distinguish
between truth and fiction in any of the older
legends and historical documents at their dis-
posal. They could not separate the fact from its
mythological, legendary, and poetical embellish-
ments. Indeed, they preferred it as thus em-
bellished, for it was more appropriate in this
form for their purposes of instruction. Further-
more, it is evident that the Bible writers did not
hesitate to indulge themselves in historical fiction
when they had not sufficient information, and the
lessons they wished to teach had yet to be taught."^
Really, this criticism of Dr. Briggs may as well
apply to every miraculous narrative in the Old
and New Testaments. Certainly so to the miracles
herein specially reviewed, and possibly in his
mind when he so wrote. Further on Dr. Briggs
says:^ "There is no evidence that the Divine
Spirit guided those historians of Holy Scriptures
in their historic investigations, so as to keep them
from historical errors. The Divine Spirit guided
them in their religious instructions, in the lessons
they taught from history. But there is no
evidence of any other guidance. The evidence is

* Dr. Briggs' " Study of Holy Scripture," p. 555.
» Ibid. p. 565.
' Ibid. p. 566.

Divine Education of Human Race 345

all against such guidance as prevented them from
making historic errors. They certainly did record
errors." He enumerates many such. If Dr.
Briggs is right, here is the whole question of Bible
inspiration in a nutshell. We believe with him
that the Holy Spirit guided the writers of the
biblical books in their religious instructions
and in the lessons they taught from history.
But there is really no evidence of any other
guidance. If not, then in all matters of his-
torical narratives which include everything belong-
ing to the province of history, biography, and
miracles, as well as any other alleged facts, there
is no presumption or probability of inspired
guidance, and the authenticity of all such matters,
including the statements of miracles, must depend
upon the probabilities and the facts in each
case.

Upon this theory, we have been guided in the
discussion of particular miracles and particular
Mosaic customs and ordinances. Some of those
customs and ordinances are so contrary to the
moral attributes of Deity that they cannot have
been sanctioned or enjoined by Him, even accord-
ing to the ideas of Dr. Briggs that they were
gradual developments in God's training of the
Israelites. Under such theory he claims that God
indorsed the Mosaic laws allowing slavery, polyg-
amy, and divorces; commends the purpose of
Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac; that He

346 Evolution of Religions

accepted the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter;
that "the offering up of children and of domestic
animals and grains (as sacrifices) was all a pre-
paratory discipline for the religion of Christ,"
and that the theophanic angel commended the
inhospitable Jael for her brutal assassination of
Sisera. He excuses such errors in moral precepts
because they were, as he says, necessary in order
to educate Israel for a nobler time when Israel,
as well as the Christian Church, would abhor
slavery and polygamy and those other outrages
as sins and crimes.

According to such argument and by analogy,
all the crimes and wickedness which have occurred
in all the nations and ages of the world might be
justified as part of God's education of the human
race, for the advent of Christianity. Dr. Briggs'
ideas in these matters illustrate what absurd
and inconsistent positions he has supposed him-
self compelled to take in his advocacy of the
theophanic control and guidance of Abraham and
Moses and other Bible characters, and of the
Mosaic institutions, according to the strict letter
of the Torah, thus singularly liberal and pro-
gressive in most of his Scriptural ideas and
interpretations, and reactionary and strictly ortho-
dox in others, which are entirely indefensible, but
must be advocated and indorsed to sustain his
theophanic and Christophanic theories.

Some of the miracles of the Bible are of such

Divine Education of Human Race 347

character and so trivial in purpose when con-
sidered in the Hght of the divine attributes as to
seem clearly unworthy of divine intervention and
so merit little discussion as to authenticity.
Therefore inspiration cannot be predicated, per se,
of miracles as historical incidents. If challenged
or doubted, — and any honest man has a right to
doubt, — they should be proven, and the claim of
biblical inspiration alone cannot be assumed as
sufficient proof, for those who require evidence
upon which to base their beliefs. Again we
repeat if, according to Dr. Briggs, — and we fully
indorse his position on this question, — there was
no inspiration or guidance of the Holy Spirit to
biblical writers originally, or, as compilers of
more ancient manuscripts into our present bibli-
cal books, excepting in their religious instructions
and moral lessons from history, then their narra-
tives of supernatural occurrences, as historical
facts, are of no more force and have no more
sanction of the Holy Spirit than their narratives
of other historical events, and are no more obliga-
tory upon our belief, really much less so, as
supernatural occurrences naturally require much
greater proof than ordinary historic events.

CHAPTER XVIII

MISCELLANEOUS CONCLUSIONS

THIS is the age of great evolutions in religious
belief. The idea of sacrificial worship of God
by the sacrifice of animals as pleasing or accept-
able to Him has been utterly discarded from all
the great religions, and the theory of atonement
for sins, through such sacrifices, is no longer
held by any of them, only orthodox Christianity
believing even in the atonement by Jesus Christ.
This is a great advance upon the worships of past
ages. Men of all religions are earnestly testing all
the foimdations of their faith. Many of the
theories of a few centuries ago are becoming
antiquated; the older Christian catechisms are
rejected, and the various sects are contending for
new statements of doctrines. This religious im-
rest not only exists in the Christian world, but
is permeating other faiths, — Parsees, Jews, Brah-
mans. Buddhists, Confucianists, and Mohammed-
ans. Out of this agitation, doubtless, great good
will eventually result. Each of these religionists
believes its sacred books alone to be the
word of God, excepting the Christians, Moham-
medans, and Mormons who also believe in the

348

Miscellaneous Conclusions 349

Bible of Jews and Christians as well as in their
own special holy books. But each is becoming
better acquainted than ever before with the
other faiths, and the elements of a common
brotherly regard are being evolved between all.
The Mohammedan believes as sincerely in
Moses and the prophets and in Jesus Christ, though
differing in some immaterial doctrines, as Chris-
tians do, and the Mormons whilst venerating their
own founder and regarding the Book of Mormon
as a revelation from God, subsequent to all
others, yet profess, as firmly as Christians, to
believe in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.

So there is for Jews, Christians, Mohammedans,
and Mormons, common grounds of belief which
should bring them nearer together in the essentials
of religion, viz., one God, devotion to His service,
and a future life of happiness eventually for all,
and in Jesus Christ, divinely sent, and inspired
as a man only, if not as a manifestation or incarna-
tion of Deity. The Parsee or Zoroastrian, Buddh-
ist and Confucianist, though knowing little imtil
recent years, of Moses and the prophets or of Jesus,
agree with all the other faiths in supreme belief in
God and a future life. These common groimds of
belief should be sufficient to unite and harmonize
all these religionists, so that, when opportunities
occur, they could worship in the same temples,
under the benign creed of the old Jewish prophet
Micah, "All that is required of thee, oh man, is to

350 Evolution of Religions

do justly — to love mercy and to walk humbly
with thy God." So having in "essentials, unity,
in non-essentials, liberty, and in all things char-
ity," and so hve and work together in common
brotherhood. The Hindoostanee Parsee, proud
of the remote antiquity of his faith, the Buddhist
and the Moslem all worshiping the One, Only
God, each rejecting all sacrificial services as well
as the Trinity and vicarious atonement of Jesus
Christ, must have some charity in worshiping
with their orthodox Christian brethren, but the
great essentials of their creeds are the same, even
if mystically diverse.

Liberal students of each of the great religions
of the world have been for a number of years
past, as they had not been before, investigating
the other religions and their sacred books, and the
result is that they are beginning to see and be-
lieve that however much they may differ in mat-
ters of history, miracles, forms, rites of worship;
yet all those sacred books form in common the
basis of the same moral code of God's revelations
to mankind and were undoubtedly given by Him
in their various forms, as instructions in the educa-
tion of the human race and adapted to the differ-
ent ages, and the intellectual and moral conditions
of the people when those books were written.
The great Congress of Religions at the World's Fair
in Chicago in 1893, in which all the different re-
ligions of the world were represented, and their

Miscellaneous Conclusions 351

tenets were presented and discussed by the ablest
priests and scholars of each faith, accomplished
a great work in the way of obliterating differences
and antagonisms, and in unifying and harmonizing
the various religious systems.

Good work in the same direction was probably
done at the great Paris World's Exposition of 1900,
although we have not seen any extended report of
the same, and therefore cannot speak advisedly
about it. Great good will undoubtedly result
not only to the cause of universal religion, but
also to human progress and national and race
amenities generally from such great cosmopolitan
religious conferences. The old-time belief in
favoritism by Deity of the Hebrew or of any other
particular race or nation, is rapidly disappearing.
Consequently a broader humanitarianism, sym-
pathy, and catholicity of opinions, than ever be-
fore manifested, are spreading over the world.
The intense selfish exclusiveness and bigotry of the
past ages, when

"Lands, intersected by a narrow firth,
Abhorred each other. Mountains interposed,
Made enemies of nations, which had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one,"

are fast disappearing with the now frequent inter-
mingling of people of all races, religions, and condi-
tions of life in business, commerce, and travel, and
the more general diffusion of knowledge. Men

35^ Evolution of Religions

are everywhere beginning to believe in the Heav-
enly Father as the one God of all, "who is
fotind of all who love and seek Him." The gen-
eral dissemination and recognition of this great
truth are rapidly advancing the sentiment of uni-
versal brotherhood among men. This sentiment
of fraternity, toleration, and sympathy, is one of
the great evolutions of religious thought and
feeling, developing out of the race feelings, intol-
erance, and bigotry of the past.

There is much purity, beauty, and truth, as we
have seen, in all the world's sacred books. The
intelligent and liberal-minded of all faiths,
especially many of our great Christian scholars,
and those who have become cosmopolitan by
travel in foreign lands, are gradually coming to
recognize the truths in all religions as emana-
tions from the same divine source. Broad-gauged
Christians feel that the humble and sincere de-
votees of all other faiths are brethren with them
in the imiversal fellowship of Jesus Christ and the
love of God, and while seeking, as they may have
opportunity, to lead them into the higher life of
Christianity, yet respect their convictions and
affiliate with them.

It will bear frequent repetition that "God is
everywhere and in everything." He is our com-
mon Father. In Him, we of all creeds alike, live,
move, and have our beings. He loves and cares
for all alike. These truths in the evolutions of

Miscellaneous Conclusions 353

human progress and development, will, we believe,
soon have universal, practical, as well as theo-
retical recognition,

God does not let the imiverse run itself. His
empire is a reign of imiversal, changeless, eternal,
moral, and physical laws. But though govern-
ing all things by imiform and unchangeable
system. He ever is, ever was, and ever must be
at the helm of His empire, and all things are
ultimately as He wills. How this may be we
know not, but in the nature of His attributes and
perfections, it must be so. If anything in the
entire realms of matter, or of mind, or life, tem-
poral or eternal, happens contrary to His will,
be it the result of destiny, work of evil spirits, or
free agency of man, the power that so acts and
accomplishes results contrary to God's will, is
necessarily greater than God and independent of
Him, an imperium in imperio. Were it so the
universe would be like a ship at sea without com-
pass or pilot, and God's children could not safely
rest in the consciousness of His infinite wisdom and
love, if not accompanied by His absolute control
of all things in His infinite knowledge and power.
Here in this life we cannot understand many
things; indeed, with all our knowledge we know
but little of God's ways. The Bible teaches
generally the doctrine of man's free agency, but
in many pages the contrary, as in some of the
Prophets, in Ecclesiastes, and in Romans ix, and

354 Evolution of Religions

certainly that it is limited always by training,
heredity, and environments. Our passions, appe-
tites, and desires are given us for beneficent
purposes, but are more or less dominated by
hereditary influences as well as by surroimding
conditions.

If all are "conceived in sin and bom in
iniquity," then none are free agents from birth,
but are dominated by overmastering influences
for evil. These conditions and influences certainly
should be taken into account in the question of
man's moral responsibility, for his actions in
connection with influences to the contrary, and
the light and knowledge he may possess. Many
criminals are doubtless moral degenerates —
some from childhood — and are morally irre-
sponsible. For all violations of merely natural
laws, nature provides certain pimishment in
disease and pain and premature death. For
violations of moral laws, man is not competent
to be the final judge. Only God who knows all
the intents and purposes of the heart and all
matters and questions affecting moral respon-
sibility can be the exact judge. The punishment
may be, and doubtless mostly is, in this life, or it
may extend into the future life, but as the moral
responsibility can only be that of finite man, for
finite acts, so the punishment in equity can only
be finite and limited. " Shall not the judge of all
the earth do right?" Of course nothing in the

Miscellaneous Conclusions 355

universe can happen or result contrary to God's
will, but ordinarily He, as the Bible teaches, in
His wise economy, permits men to act on their
own responsibility, overruling, however, and ulti-
mately controlling all things and all acts of men
in His wisdom as He sees best in His infinite plans.
If this theory — and it certainly seems to be the
Bible theory — be true, then eternal punishment is
untrue. Here we live largely under limitations,
necessities, and environments. What we do, God
foreknew, and so it was and is written. The
mystery of our acts, good and bad, squared with
God's fore-knowledge of all things and the cer-
tainty that nothing in the universe can be done or
happen contrary to God's will and purposes, is
impenetrable, and no human intellect can solve
the enigma. St. Paul wrestles with it,' and as-
serts the doctrine that all men are clay in the great
Potter's hands, and that our lives are as He wills.
If so, the enigma is solved, but elsewhere in His
Epistles, St. Paul seems to teach a different
theory. There are, however, mysteries which
the Bible does not solve, and which never have
been solved, and of which the solution will be
made known, if at all, doubtless only in the
future life. AVhy and how God exists; how the
universe came into existence from the voiceless
void of abysmal night ; from whence or how came
the atoms, protoplasmic germs, and evolutions

» Romans, ch. ix.

356 Evolution of Religions

thereof from which all things are ; why and how
the human race exists and is constituted as it is ;
why evil and sin abound; why disease and suf-
fering and death are; what the purpose of this
great drama of life is ; how it comports with God's
attributes ; — all these things are incomprehensible
mysteries, only made more so by the delusions of
orthodox tenets.

All human life is a chaos of vanity, as says the
Book of Ecclesiastes, unless in all its phases of
light and darkness, good and evil, happiness and
misery, it is en rapport with God's universal econ-
omy, and is so that all life's seeming incongruities
will be adjusted, equalized, and harmonized in
the eternal hereafter by infinite balances and com-
pensations. So that sin, pain, and evil here will
ultimately contribute to work out and evolve uni-
versal good and universal happiness. Such must
be, it would seem, the ultimate result, if there be
a purpose — and there surely is — in all the great
drama of human life. It is apparently the only
theory upon which all the mysteries of life can
be imderstood, and the existence of sin and evil be
harmonized in consistency with the attributes of
God. Inspired with such faith and hope, we
can bow our heads in lowly reverence and sub-
mission to His will, and amidst all the changes
and vicissitudes, the troubles and sorrows of life,
as well as in its joys, humbly say, "Thy will be
done." No other theory than this, even though

Miscellaneous Conclusions 357

it is the antithesis of the horrible tenets of
orthodoxy, of eternal happiness for the millions
and eternal hell for the billions of our race,
it seems to us, can harmonize with all the vary-
ing conditions of men under God's moral gov-
ernment and reconcile us to all the vicissitudes
of life.

When we accept this theory, we should be filled
with complete and submissive trust in God and
animated to use all our powers and faculties to
make ourselves and our fellow-men happy. We
are assured that God is the one Universal Father
and cares for all His children. Hence while
sorrows and punishments may be meted out to us
for sins and for failures to use as best we could our
talents and opportunities, yet those penalties will
be for our reformation, and will result and end in
our ultimate and eternal welfare.

This life and the future are and can be but one.
They are only changes of conditions and environ-
ments. The demands of infinite justice, which
bigotry has for ages dinned into our ears with
threats of its awful, merciless, and eternal hell,
will be met and harmonized in that future life
by infinite adjustments, and finally canceled by
the omnipotence and fullness of infinite love.
Many things which seem sinful here from want
of knowledge of the motives and forces which
actuate and even compel men to do apparently
wrong, will be seen in the light of eternity to have

35^ Evolution of Religions

been right, and actions which perhaps may have
been heralded as grand and good, will appear
there in their naked deformity of purpose as
wicked and desperately evil. But for all the good
and evil of our earthly lives we believe there will
be hereafter merciful judgments and infinite com-
pensations, with such final adjustments and
limited finite punishments for our sins, if not fully
meted out to us here, as justice and mercy may
require.

Some teach that beyond the confines of time
nearly everything of earth and of our earthly
lives are forgotten or banished from our memories
in Paradise, and that only the wicked will re-
member in perdition. That only the singing of
hymns and waving of palm branches amid the
ecstatic joys of the celestial home will occupy the
time and thought of the redeemed. That there
will be no identity of self, no knowledge of rela-
tives and friends on earth, no memories of the
past, no continuance and everlasting enjoyment
of our earthly treasures of thoughts and know-
ledge, of affections and hopes. If so, then indeed
is future life a delusion, a chimera. If in the
future life, even in heaven, we shall all drink of
Lethe's cup and remember nothing of life on
earth, of parents, wife, and children, of love's
young dream and ecstasies, of the old home
Elysium, aye, of all earth's good and ills, and only
exist in perpetual idleness and sing monotonous

Miscellaneous Conclusions 359

songs which inspire no memories and messages of
the past, then is death to all intents and purposes
annihilation or oblivion, and there might as well
be a new creation of soul, as a continuance of the
earth-bom one, when all of its life, love, and mem-
ories past, is forgotten. Then immortality, if
such immortality can be conceived, would be only
a delusion, merely a theosophic metempsychosis,
or metamorphosis, worse than Buddha's eternal
round of unconscious spiritual existence, ia animal
or reptilian forms before Nir\'ana is attained.

No! We believe such theories are false! Sotil
sleeping, in mental paralysis, or oblivion, return-
ing centuries, or it may be millions of years after
death to gather up the atoms of the dust of our
decayed bodies, from land and oceans, wherever
winds and waves and endless changes have carried
them, and thus rehabiHtate our old decayed or-
ganisms, is another ancient delusion bom of ig-
norance and superstition and akin to the belief
of forge tfulness after mortal death, of everything
we knew on earth. Blessed be Yahweh of old,
the great and good God, in the higher and grander
faith which is now beginning to illuminate the
world as the mission and teachings of Jesus are
better understood; death of the mortal body is
merely the resurrection of the soul, the "alter
ego," the "eternal life," bom with us and devel-
oping in the sunshine of infinite love, in our finite
mortality.

360 Evolution of Religions

So the lessons of Jesus teach. So the "Great
Apostle" St. Paul teaches.^ So all the analogies
of nature teach, and above all our spirits, hopes,
and aspirations of immortaHty teach. They are
hopes and aspirations which God Himself has
endowed all human beings with, and which in His
truth, He cannot, therefore, — we say it rever-
ently, — permit to be in vain. God is eternally
true. To endow us with such glorious hopes and
permit them to end in nothingness, would be a
delusion and mockery which God cannot do or
permit. Immortality is true as God is true. We
are, as Jesus Christ was, all born of God's eternal
essence, and as He, the Son of God, lives, we shall
all live, and sooner or later "all know even as we
are known by Him" forever. This, under all the
teachings of all religions, of dark ignorance and
superstition of the past, as well as of light and
knowledge of our day, is the imiversal deathless
hope and faith, of all peoples and all religions,
God-given and eternal. It is as old as when the
morning stars sang together at creation's dawn
for all the children of the Highest, including the
new pair in Eden, and it is the deathless hope of
all their posterity.

Therefore, we believe resurrection and the
future life will be for each and all of human kind,
as Jesus left the tomb and lived not in flesh, but
in the spirit life and image of God. Not in our

• I Corinthians, ch. xv.

Miscellaneous Conclusions 361

worn-out and earthly bodies. " Flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God." In that
rejuvenated and glorious Kfe and new and ever
happy home, we shall all, as His children, see and
know God, face to face. There, we believe with-
out a doubt, all the human family, sooner or later,
and not long perhaps after probations, — for
some longer or shorter, — as justice in mercy
may require, seeking pardon each for all the
ignorant erring past, in the clear light of eternity,
and each forever eschewing sins and follies, may
and will repent if never before, and will be for-
given there, as all may be here. There will be
no repetition of punishment. Whatever natural,
physical, or moral penalties for transgressions of
divine laws have been suffered here, — and most
we think are punished sufficiently here, — will not
be repeated in the future. It would be unjust,
adding vindictive and accumulative penalties
to expiations already made, and, notwithstand-
ing the tenets of orthodoxy, contrary to the
eternal principles of equity. If we shall live and
know and remember there as here, even the "chief
of sinners" can repent in the future life as well as
in this, and no logical reason can be given by
bigotry, why not, and why pardon may not be
extended there.

God only knows our environments, mental,
moral, and physical conditions, infirmities, and
temptations. Very much that is deemed sin is not

362 Evolution of Religions

sin, but is only the result of destiny, or rather of
misfortune, heredity, and overmastering influences
which destroy our freedom of will and clearness
of judgment and moral perception, and thus
render us moral weaklings. Very many criminals
are doubtless quasi-insane and unaccoimtable
morally, and should be restrained and not con-
signed to prisons, or the gallows. Tens of thou-
sands, yes millions, of the best men and women of
earth, have gone to the darkness of dungeons,
and perished on the gallows, or in flames, for mere
beliefs, for imaginary sins and crimes, for deeds
and words for which they ought to have had the
approbation of their enemies and persecutors,
instead of punishment.

There is not, and cannot be, any past or future
with God. All is present, eternity, now. Man's
work and life here is all a part of his eternity, and
in the same continuing plane of education and
action. It is a continuous life, and there is no
changing or reversing it, no hiatus in God's plans.
Our work here is as much for eternity as the work
and education of the future life will be. God is
always educating and training us. We are all
in His school, and we live here and are trained and
governed under the same laws and principles as
we shall work and live imder forever. This
ought to be, and it seems to us must be, the
universal religion, and none other or contrary
can be true. God has not fixed any arbitrary

Miscellaneous Conclusions 363

time for limiting man's eternal weal or woe.
Such limitations have been laid down and declared
for Him, by pimy, presumptuous men, as Moses
and others of the prophets did, when they an-
noimced, imder the bold caption of "Thus saith
the Lord," sundry laws, ordinances, and reHgious
rites, which He never enjoined or sanctioned.
Some of these have been specifically noted and
commented upon in these pages, and we stand
upon the record made. God evidently created
all people for His glory and their good, and for
His glory and our good in His infinite plans
we shall, and must, eternally live.

There are no blanks or failures in God's plans,
no misfits. One single soul, eternally lost, ruined,
damned, records an infinite failure in God's
economy. It cannot be! There can be no such
failure, no such record in the eternal years of
God. We may go astray. We may for a time
violate His laws, permissively, as far as man can,
but He will evolve good out of the evil. We can
never get outside of His care and mercy. He is
never hardened against us. Such teachings are
false. God does not hate, but only pities us in our
follies and our sins. We can always return from
the wilderness of sin and folly to His fold, nay,
He will surely finally bring us there. Repentance
now and forever, here and in the future life as
well, will always gain His pardon. He loves His
children evermore. We believe all the religions

364 Evolution of Religions

of to-day, with all that is good and true in their
teachings, will ultimately culminate in this com-
ing imiversal faith ; in the fruition of infinite, all-
embracing mercy and redemption. Such is to
be, we believe, the evolution of all religions, the
crowning glory of all the divine training and
education of mankind, throughout all the ages.
" Glory to God in the highest. Peace on earth
and good will to all men," shall become a reality.

CHAPTER XIX

CONCLUSION

IN summing up and concluding, it may be asked
what of all these criticisms of the Bible? If
these criticisms are sound and just, must there be
a new Bible written, from which shall be elimi-
nated whatever errors, or doubtful legends, or
myths, there may be in the present one, and which
shall be abreast in all things with the knowledge
of the age, in all the fields of science and literature,
in geology, astronomy, chronology, ancient history,
civil government, and religious thought? Or
shall we, adding in some things, and expurgating
in others, remodel our Bible and make a new
canon of its books, in order to satisfy modem
criticism, by thus emasculating it and removing
all questionable features? By no means! It
would not then be the Bible of our fathers, nor
of our childhood. Let the Bible remain ever as
it is. Even the old King James version is better,
with all its petty errors, more impressive, more
beautiful and attractive in expression and diction,
than the late revised edition. Our old Bible, the
great landmark of Jews, Christians, and Moham-
medans, is the best book on earth. Emphati-

365

366 Evolution of Religions

cally we affirm and believe that no new Bible can
ever be written which can compare favorably
with, or that will ever supplant or supply the
place of, our dear old Bible, even with its many
errors. None that will ever supersede the old
one. Its place in history and the realm of litera-
ture is fixed and inimitable. One half of the
history and literature of the world in the past
eighteen hundred years is inseparably boimd
up in its teachings, or warrings of the nations
of Europe over its doctrines, and the missionary
work of the past century has made it a house-
hold book in nearly all the world.

It will ever remain the great Sacred Book of
earth, immeasurably the greatest, the pillar of
light, like that which led ancient Israel in the
desert nights, for all human beings on their way
to eternity. Its errors of history, its legends of
miracles, are of little moment, merely wayside
notes of the civilizations, religious ideals and
superstitions of the centuries through which it
has come down to us. Its divine moral teachings
illuminating all its pages are eternal. We can
know no more of God than it tells us, and its
ethics are changeless. It must ever remain the
supremely Sacred Book of the world. Its the-
ology and its ethics can never be changed or
improved upon. Hence any new purported reve-
lation from God, if any should ever be written,
would be an imposture. New ethics and a new

Conclusion 367

theology would be false. Variations of our
Bible teachings, Hke the Koran and Book of
Mormon, could only be plagiarisms of its morals
and literary beauties, and new miracles could
only be false. Our old Bible's teaching of an
ever living, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-
present God, the all wise, infinitely merciful and
imiversal Father of all human beings, of all races
and creeds, can never be improved upon. No
man can ever write any grander, holier book.
The histories of the most ancient nations and
peoples, the lives and family circles of the old
nomadic patriarchs of Arabia and Canaan, the
customs and manners of those far remote ages,
cannot be again so elegantly and truthfully
reproduced. The wonderful legendary miracles
and historic poems of the Bible most faithfully
portray ancient currents of thought, ancient
beliefs, superstitions, and forms of worship,
presenting a mirror of those times which the
present or future can never reflect and can never
be revivified by historian, poet, or novelist. Its
pastoral idyls and romances, its poems and sacred
songs, are imrivaled and peerless. Its religion,
divested of the fables and mysticisms which
obscure some of its pages, is divine. Man has
evolved from its allegorical sketches and parables
many various philosophies, degrading conceptions
of human nature, and horrible creeds of infinite
hate and eternal torments. These creeds, if any

368 Evolution of Religions

sanction at all is given to them in the pages of the
Bible, are either based on perversions of alle-
gorical teachings, or framed from fantasies of the
bigots of the Dark Ages, inten\^oven by them into
the original text, — delusions, — in harmony with the
superstitions of the age, and are contrary to the
higher and nobler revelations of Deity. Some
of the teachings of New Testament books seem to
sanction such creeds, but if so, they are at variance
with their general tenor and grander truths, and
with the whole divine economy, clearly revealed
in the Bible as a system of truth, and are, there-
fore, foreign growths.

The geology of the Genesis narrative of creation
is, so far as it goes and rightly understood, correct,
and its general features are indorsed by modem
science, whilst the philosophies of Egyptian,
Babylonian, Chinese, Greek, and other ancient
scholars, are worthless. The astronomy of the
Bible is, of course, only what astronomers of olden
times were able to learn of the celestial bodies by
their unaided visions and crude geometry without
assistance of photographic, spectroscopic, or tele-
scopic instruments. Evidently inspiration did
not extend to communicating a knowledge of
the sciences to the ancient patriarchs and sages,
it only gave them religious light.

In the literature of the world, our Bible's place
is forever fixed. There is no occasion for a new
one. Mohammed, Emanuel Swedenborg, and

Conclusion 369

Joseph Smith sought to supplant, or add to, the
Bible, by imaginary later revelations, but the
Al-Koran, Book of ]\Iormon, and Swedenborg's
Apocalypse, are but travesties of the grand old
Book. A good Jew or Christian does not want
any new Bible or paraphrase of the old. A
philosophic Atheist cannot write a new Bible,
because he does not believe in a God or a future
life, and he cannot frame any newer or better
ethics for the world than is found in the Scriptures.
Nor could an Agnostic, who professes to know
nothing of God and doubts everything, do any
better. Nor could the Deist who believes in a
God, but denies or doubts revelations from Him,
improve on the character of the God of the Bible,
or formulate any better or purer code of morals.
Good Christians and profound scholars, like
Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Briggs, Mueller, or Dr.
Channing, could not write a Bible which would
supplant the old one, because they could neither
improve its ethics nor teach anything new of
God. They might eliminate some historical errors,
some of the legendary miracles, and some of the
Alosaic laws and ordinances from the Bible, but
its great value as a faithful mirror of the ages in
which it was written would be thus impaired,
and its grandeur destroyed. No ! The records of
the Bible and its place in the literature of the
world, like the ancient Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and
Sanskrit classics, are fixed, sealed, and immutable.

370 Evolution of Religions

The world will never have and never need another
Bible, unless the Almighty should hereafter
reveal the wonderful secrets of His being, — as He
never has yet, — and the veiled mysteries of
immortality and eternity.

The twentieth century of the Christian era is in
its dawn. Judging from the great events and won-
derful progress of the century just closed, and the
prospective results of the religious, educational,
industrial, political, social and economic forces
now in operation all over the world, the new
century bids fair to be the grandest era of human
progress, and educational, social, and religious
development, the world has ever seen since the
beginning of historic time. Steam and electricity,
operating railways, ships, telegraphs, telephones,
and other mechanical appHances, have already
united all countries in what should be peaceful
bonds of trade and economic and social inter-
course, as never before, and as not even dreamed
of in the wildest flights of human imagination a
century ago. We can converse and do business
at our homes in one day in most of the cities and
villages of civilized countries with the dwellers of
America, Europe, India, China, Japan, Arabia,
Egypt, South Africa, Australia, and most of the
Islands of the oceans. Time and distance are
almost annihilated. Doubtless other scientific
and mechanical inventions and improvements in
all these and other lines, and indeed in everything

Conclusion 371

pertaining to human welfare, in commerce, travel,
social and religious intercourse, will yet be made.
The Anglo-Saxon race with the other affiliated
branches of the great Germanic, Teutonic, and
Scandinavian family, will, judging from the trend
of events in the past two centuries, in the not
very distant future, control the world and the
English languages, become, approximately, the
universal language. Such seems, manifest des-
tiny, and no second Tower of Babel will need
to be erected to preserve unity of speech. Na-
tions are coming more and more into fraternal
and political harmony. Difficulties will naturally
sometimes arise, and wars for a time may yet
occur, but peace congresses and national arbi-
trations of troubles and disagreements, added
to the closer assimilation of religious thought
and feelings, through the general diffusion of
rational Christianity, will surely prevent the
past frequency of wars and mitigate the ruin
and suffering caused heretofore, when they do
occur.

The results of the war of 1898, between the
United States and Spain, in the acquisition of
Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands, with the
prestige thereby gained to the United States,
and the addition of territory and population, will
imdoubtedly greatly extend our commerce and
intercourse with all nations, and tend to the wider
diffusion of the principles of civil and religious

372 Evolution of Religions

liberty and the general welfare of mankind. The
peaceful annexation of Cuba to the United States,
we beheve will, in the not very distant future,
occur. The successful conclusion of the war in
the Philippines and the pacification of those
fertile and beautiful islands under the good
government which the United States has given
them, is a fait accompli. The acquisition, a few
years ago, of the "gems of the Pacific," the lovely
and salubrious Hawaiian Islands with their
charming climate and great production of sugar,
tropical fruits, etc., was a most valuable and
important addition to our territorial area. The
magnificent possibilities which may result to our
country from the acquisition of all those islands
are yet in embryo, but imdoubtedly will be won-
derful.

In the winter of 1 898-1 899, through the court-
esy of Hon. John D. Long, Secretary of the Navy,
the writer had the great pleasure of making a
trip to the Hawaiian Islands in the elegant United
States vessel, the yacht "Iroquois," Lieutenant
Commander Charles F. Pond, U. S. N., com-
manding, with the writer's son. Lieutenant B. B.
Bierer, and Lieutenant G. L. P. Stone, assistants.
He remained there several months enjoying the
grand scenery of ocean and of all those islands and
peerless climate, the finest and most equable in
the world. The acquisition of the Hawaiian and
Spanish islands in connection with the war with

Conclusion 373

Spain, and the happy settlement of the more recent
troubles in China, with his wise domestic policy,
will make ever memorable the administration of
our lamented President, WiUiam McKinley, and
intensify our horror of the cowardly and brutal
assassination of so pure, lovable, and patriotic a
man. Indeed, with the exception of Washington
and Lincoln's, we think his administration, un-
timely shortened as it was, the most illustrious
and important in our history.

The late war in South Africa between Great
Britain and her neighbors of the Orange Free
States and Transvaal Republic, was most deplor-
able, but we believe will eventually result for the
best welfare of the people of those states, in their
incorporation and consolidation with the other
British domains in that region, and the formation
of a great South African State, which will be
nominally for years a part of the British Empire,
but which will doubtless eventually become
independent with a president appointed by the
crown, but under a republican constitution and
form of government, similar to the late federation
of all the provinces of Australia. That South
African Federation will doubtless continue to ex-
pand as the United States of America did, taking
in additional surrounding territories of the im-
civilized tribes, becoming in time a great African
Empire, Christianizing and educating all the
"Dark Continent" and assisting in the develop-

374 Evolution of Religions

merit of all the great and varied resources of that
wonderful region of the world.

The great war between Russia and Japan lately
terminated will undoubtedly have a wonderful in-
fluence upon the future destinies of those empires,
politically and otherwise, and its results be of
momentous importance to all the world, and espe-
cially to Russia, Japan, and China, in the develop-
ment of more liberal institutions in those countries
and in all the Old World and in the broadening of
commercial relations between all nations, and the
more rapid diffusion of liberal Christianity. The
United States and Great Britain nominally, and
really morally, allies; if they continue as now
and for many years past, to act in harmony on all
foreign questions, as they certainly should; with
their great colonial possessions, girdling the earth
and dominating the oceans, with institutions
though dissimilar, really both democratic and rest-
ing on the consent of the governed, will doubt-
less in the present century virtually rule the world,
if both continue to be governed wisely and patrioti-
cally, largely shaping the world's future progress
and history. In the years of this century, we be-
lieve the Christian religion, under the patronage of
the great powers of Europe and America, judging
from its rapid extension during the past century,
and allowing for the more Hberal and attractive
teachings of missionaries and interpretations and
translations of the Bible text by the best modem

Conclusion 375

scholars, as compared with the old dogmatic
versions, lessening the points of antagonism be-
tween it and all other religions, will spread over
all the earth, and intelligent people in all lands
will come to recognize and adopt it as the truest,
the best, the ultimate religion of the world. Then
all men, when that time comes, will hail their
fellow-men as brothers, worshiping with them in
the same temples, as children of the same
Heavenly Father, and inheritors by right of birth
of the same eternal destiny. We anticipate no
future divine revelation, no new Bible, but so
great has been the progress of the race, and so
astonishing the wonderful achievements of science
in the century just closed, that sometimes we
fancy, in the not very remote future, the mystic
veil between time and eternity, between life
and death, the visible and invisible, may be drawn
aside and mortals be permitted to see into the
spirit land and hold converse with the immortals.
Are these merely visionary dreams? Not if the
Bible is inspired, for it says the day is coming,
"when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the
earth as the waters cover the seas, when nations
shall not lift up the sword against nations, neither
shall they learn war any more, and when all
people shall know God, even from the least unto
the greatest."

We will close with four stanzas from Derz-
havin's Ode.

376 Evolution of Religions

TO GOD
I

"Oh Thou Eternal One whose presence bright,
All space doth occupy, all motion guide,
Unchanged through time's all devastating flight
Thou Only God, there is no God beside,
Being above all beings, Mighty One,
Whom none can comprehend and none explore.
Who fiU'st existence with Thyself alone,
Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er.
Being whom we call God, and know no more.

II
Thou from primeval nothingness didst call.
First chaos, then existence. Lord, on Thee,
Eternity hath its foundation, all
Sprung forth from Thee; of light, joy, harmony,
Sole origin. All life, all beauty Thine:
Thy word created all, and doth create.
Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine.
Thou art and wert and shall be glorious, great,
Light-giving, life-sustaining potentate.

Ill
Thou art, directing, guiding, all, Thou art;
Direct my understanding, then, to Thee.
Control my spirit, guide my wandering heart.
Though but an atom 'midst immensity,
Still I am something fashioned by thy hand.
I hold a middle rank' twixt heaven and earth.
On the last verge of mortal being stand.
Close to the realms where Angels have their birth,
Just on the boundaries of the spirit land.

Conclusion 377

IV

Creator, yes ; Thy wisdom and Thy word
Created me; Thou source of Hfe and good,
Thou spirit of my spirit, and my Lord.
Thy Hght, Thy love in their bright plenitude,
Filled me with an immortal soul to spring
Over the abyss of death, and bade it wear
The garments of eternal day, and wing
Its heavenly flight beyond this little sphere.
Even to the source, to Thee its Author there."

APPENDIX

Note A. Briggs' "Study of Holy Scripture,"
page 287. "It may be regarded as the certain
result of the science of the Higher Criticism that
Moses did not write the Pentateuch or Job. Ezra
did not write the Chronicles, Ezra, or Nehemiah;
Jeremiah did not write the Book of the Kings or
Lamentations; David did not write the Psalter,
but only a few of the Psalms; Solomon did not
write the Song of Songs or Ecclesiastes, and only
a portion of the Proverbs ; Isaiah did not write
half the book that bears his name. The great
mass of the Old Testament was written by authors
whose names or connection with their writings
are lost in oblivion. If this is destroying the
Bible, the Bible is destroyed already. But who
tells us that these traditional names were the
authors of the Bible? The Bible itself? The
creeds of the Church? Any reliable historical
testimony? None of these! Pure conjectural
tradition. Nothing more."

Note B. Many of the ancient Fathers were
of this belief; among others, Clement of Alex-
andria, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Augustine, and
Irenseus. The latter wrote in Adv. Horeses iii,

378

Appendix 379

21-22: " During the captivity of the people under
Nebuchadnezzar, the Scriptures had been cor-
rupted, and when after seventy years the Jews
had returned to their owtl lands, then in the time
of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, God in-
spired Esdras, the priest of the tribe of Levi, to
recast all the words of former prophets and to
reestablish with the people the Mosaic legis-
lation."

Note C. " But is there not some testimony as
to authorship in the biblical books apart from
titles? Yes, a little. In the Hexateuch, Num.
xxi, 14 cites a poetic extract from the books
of the wars of Jahveh. Jos. x 12, 13, cites a
section of an ode of the battle of Beth-horon
from the Book of Jasher. The Book of Jasher
is also cited in II Sam. i, 18, where a dirge of
David is given. It is also cited in LXX version
of I Kings, viii, 12, with a poetic extract from
Solomon. The Book of Jasher, containing poems
from David and Solomon, could not have been
written before Solomon. The writing which cites
the Book of Jasher must have been written after
the Book of Jasher. If now, as modem critics
imanimously hold, the Book of Joshua and the
Pentateuch belong together as a Hexateuch, then
it is the testimony of the Hexateuch itself that
it could not have been written in its present form
before the time of David or Solomon." — Briggs*
"The Bible, the Church, the Reason," page 137.

380 Evolution of Religions

Note D. "The primitive sources of biblical his-
tory are mythologies, legends, poems, laws, whether
inscribed, written, or traditional, historical docu-
ments and the use of the historical imagination.
There can be little doubt that there is a strong
mythological element at the basis of biblical
history as well as of other ancient histories.
The myth is indeed the most primitive historic
form and mold, in which that which is most
ancient is transmitted from primitive peoples.
There are such myths in the stories of the Book
of Genesis and in the poetry of Job, Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Zechariah, and not a few of the Psalms,"
— Idem. Briggs, page 555.

Note E. " The Zend A vesta. IVIany interested,
but necessarily honest readers, of the Zend Avesta
overlook the fact that in the ancient documents
comprised under that name, we have works of
many different ages ; that from leaf to leaf matters
come before them made up of pieces nearly or
quite dissimilar, and sometimes separated as to
the dates of their authorship by many hundreds of
years. They are accordingly apt to make them-
selves merry over absurdities which prevail in the
later but still genuine Avesta, as if they were
peculiar to the original Zoroastrian writing.
It is at present intended to call attention to the
now undoubted and long since suspected fact that
it pleased the Divine Power to reveal some of the
most important articles of our catholic creed.

Appendix 381

first to Zoroaster, and through their literature to
the Jews and ourselves. Surely the first object of
religion, next to the suppression of unlawful
violence or appropriation, should be the sup-
pression of inaccurate statement; and to deny
without any effort to become an expert, what every
expert knows to be the truth, is, so it seems to
me, to commit a crime in the name of Christianity,
for which Christianity will one day be called to
account.

"It is therefore to help the Church against
well-furnished gainsayers, and to reestablish her
character for conscientious investigation, that some
Christian specialists in orientalism have given the
best years of their lives to save the endeared
religion which once inculcated every honorable
sentiment from continuing herself the victim of
that most sinister of equivocation known as
'pious frauds.' How, then, should we handle
the question of Zoroastrian influence with the
Jews ? I would say that any or all of the historical,
doctrinal, or hortative statements in the Old or the
New Testament might, while fervently believed
to be inspired by the Divine Power, be yet freely
traced to other religious systems for their mental
initiative, that the historical origin of particular
doctrines or ideas which are expressed in the
Old or New Testament does not touch the ques-
tion of their inspiration, unless we are prepared to
accede to a docetic heresy doubting the reality of

3^2 Evolution of Religions

our Savior's human nature. Every sentiment of
veneration ought to induce us to trace, if it be
possible to trace them, not only the foimtain
heads of His human convictions, but the supply-
ing rills of His expressions. If we carefully study
the genealogy of His body, with how much greater
earnestness should we examine those of His mind.
For it was His thoughts, humanly speaking, and
sometimes His earHer ones, which not only con-
stituted a part of His momentous history, but of
course also actually determined His career. The
theologies of Egypt should be also examined,
as well as those of Greece and Rome.

" From India we have what seems a throng of
rich analogies from the Buddhist Scriptures.
There remains the ancient Persian theology, and
here the historical connection amounts at one
stage at least to historical identity, and is as
such, I believe, universally recognized. Cyrus,
the Persian, brought the Jewish people back when
they had become a captive people, and rebuilt
Jerusalem when it had become a heap, and book
after book of the Bible dates from the reigns of
the Persian kings, while Magian priests, who
were of the reHgion of Cyrus, came later to do
honor to the Son of Mary, and one of the last
words of Jesus upon the cross was from the
Persian tongue : ' Verily I say unto thee, To-day
shalt thou be with me in Paradise ' (Luke xxiii,
43). Cyrus was originally, or at heart, a Mazda

Appendix 383

worshiper. The word 'Mazda' (strictly 'Dah')
meaning the 'Great Creator' or the 'Great
Wise One,' is an especially well-adapted name
for God, much more so than our own name for
Him, and this revering title well expresses the
enlightened tone of the book (Zend Avesta).
If, then, any ancient volume could claim our
attention, it would seem to be the Sacred Scrip-
tures of that great ]\lazda worshiper, who under
the providence of God determined the later
history of the Jewish people. For had Cyrus, the
Mazda worshiper, not brought the people back to
Jerusalem, the later prophets might not have
spoken there, nor might Jesus have been bom at
Bethlehem, nor taught in that region. Indeed,
the influence of the great restorer Cyrus and his
successors over the city was so positive that
Jerusalem was for a considerable period after the
return from Babylon in many respects a Persian
city. Some of the most important features of the
Pharisaic orthodoxy were, imder the providence
of God, taught directly, or indirectly, through
the Persian influence; the name ' Pharisee ' itself
being the equivalent of 'Farsee,* a later form
of ' Parsee.'

" Few scientific theologians will deny that the
doctrine of immortality was scarcely mooted
before the captivity, while the Zoroastrian Scrip-
tures are one mass of spiritualism, referring all
results to the heavenly or infernal worlds. Ame-

384 Evolution of Religions

retatat, — immortality, — as one of the six per-
sonified, attributes of the Deity, did not represent
long life alone, but never dying life. Resurrec-
tion seems to be placed after the reception of
souls into heaven, as if they returned later to a
purified earth. And is this really not the doc-
trine of St, John's Revelation? In Yasht xix, 83,
we have resurrection together with millennial
perfection. ' We sacrifice imto the kingly glory
which shall cleave tmto the victorious Savior and
His companions, when He shall make the world
progress imto perfection, and when it shall be
never dying, not decaying, never rotting, ever
living, ever useful, having power to fulfil all wishes ;
when the dead shall arise and immortal life shall
come, when the settlements shall be all death-
less.* Compare these then with statements
which appear after the return from the captivity,
a captivity during which the Jews had come in
contact with a great religion, in which the pas-
sages cited described a predominant tendency.
What do we find in them? First, we have the
jubilant hope expressed by the later Isaiah,
'Let thy dead live, let my body arise. Awake
and sing, ye that dwell in the dust ! For thy dew
is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast
forth the shades.* And then the full statement in
Daniel: 'And many of them that sleep in the
dust of the earth shall awake, some to ever-
lasting life, and some to everlasting shame and

Appendix 385

contempt.' And yet, as we have seen above,
God's people had not fully accepted the meaning
of this language at the time of Christ. We draw
this inference, the religion of the Jews was origi-
nally Saddusaic." — " Zoroaster and the Bible," by
Rev. J. H. Mills, in the Nineteenth Century, Janu-
ary, 1894.

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